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Dither at Nay bk ory PUR LICATION S 


ENGLISH VERSE 


BETWEEN 


CHAUCER AND SURREY 





English Verse 


between Chaucer and Surrey 


Being Examples of Conventional Secular Poetry, 
exclusive of Romance, Ballad, Lyric, and 
Drama, in the Period from Henry the 


Fourth to Henry the Eighth 


EDITED 
WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES 


BY 


ELEANOR PRESCOTT HAMMOND, Ph.D. 


To know, 
Rather consists in opening out a way, 
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, 
Than in effecting entry for a light 
Supposed to be without. 
— Browning, Paracelsus i: 733-37 


76210 


DURHAM : NORTH CAROLINA 
DUKESUNIVERSITY PRESS 


LONDON: 
THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 


1927, 


COPYRIGHT 192'7 
DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS 





THE SEEMAN PRESS 
DURHAM, N.C. 


To 
ARTHUR SAMPSON NAPIER 


Late Merton Professor 
of the English Language and Literature 
in the University of Oxford 


¢ SCHOLAR « MASTER ¢ FRIEND e 


G&EQID 





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PREFACE 


This volume is intended primarily for the advanced student of English literary 
history ; and such intention has influenced both its plan and its mode of presenta- 
tion. No single volume can fully represent the productivity of the century-and-a- 
half between the death of Chaucer and the birth of Spenser, and can also offer 
the necessary comment upon the published texts. For barren as is the period 
in one sense, it is nevertheless enormously prolific, and the aspects of its expres- 
sion too varied for treatment in any compact anthology. The ballad and the 
religious drama, both of which lie partly within this tract of time, have been abun- 
dantly studied ; investigation of non-dramatic religious poetry is well under way; 
the romances have their share of attention; but the field of what I may call for 
convenience “formal” verse, the mass of secular production partly narrative, 
partly didactic, partly satiric, partly amatory, partly descriptive, verse adhering 
anxiously to standardized forms and stylistic devices, is still nearly untouched. 
It is in this field that the soil of English literature most obviously becomes ex- 
hausted during the fifteenth century; and the study of these works may seem to 
the casual observer a thankless task. Yet without such a study the survey of 
English literary history is arbitrarily scanted; and every worker who views litera- 
ture not as belles-lettres but as the expression of the national mind realizes that the 
functioning of that mind, like the movements of the racehorse or the boxer, is 
most clearly to be observed when the film is slowed. Elton has said that “the 
passage from older themes and styles into newer is best seen in the writers of mid- 
dle rank and mixed performance” ; and in this “Transition,” of all periods in our 
literature, that possibility of analysis is present. The rockbottom qualities which 
affect the currents of literature are visible not at triumphant flood but at ebb- 
tide. The “Transition” has much to teach the student as to the working of psychic 
factors and the influence of the social environment on poetic expression; more- 
over, principles drawn thence are valid even among the greatest. After observing 
the excess of standardization in Lydgate or in Hawes, we regard the lessening in 
Spenser, the still more marked lessening in Shakespeare, not so much as a miracle 
but rather as a return to the balance long prevented by formalism. 

Even with this limitation, it is impossible in a single volume to cover the 
field. In making a choice, the editor has endeavored to illustrate the different 
degrees of conservatism, the admixture now of satire, now of description, now 
of autobiography or of the personal, in the progress towards free treatment 
of the individual. A mass of verse at the close of the period is excluded because 
of its non-formal character. Copland’s two poems, Cocke Lorel’s Bote, Colyn 
Blowbole’s Testament, etc., would greatly enlarge our picture of the national 
mind, but they are outside the scope of this volume. Much has also been omitted 
from considerations of expense; the Flower and the Leaf should be here, as 
representing a motif highly favored by the courtly poetry of the time, but it is 
accessible in a modern text, and has accordingly been withdrawn from this anthol- 


[ vii ] 


Vill ENGLISH VERSE 


ogy. Gower is untouched here for the same reason. But a good deal of the con- 
tents of this volume is unobtainable by the student. Walton’s Boethius, Lydgate’s 
Dance Macabre; the translations of Orléans, Nevill, the Visions of Cavendish, 
and other poems, are accessible only in expensive editions if at all. And not 
only these poems, but most or all of those here printed are selected as illus- 
trating dominant motifs of the time:—the anxious curiosity about death, the 
Fortune-formula, the laments over extravagance, the eagerness about trade and 
travel, the paraded encyclopedic knowledge, the bourgeois contempt for women 
and the cavalier deference for women, the rising interest in the scamp, the sub- 
servience to patrons, the lip-respect for Chaucer. In several poems either the in- 
fluence of Chaucer is visible or a passage of Chaucer is illuminated, as in Bycorne 
and Chichevache, Canace’s letter, Walton’s Boethius, etc. 

Wherever possible, the texts are printed as wholes or as portions complete 
in themselves. We might do as did Charles Lamb for the Elizabethan drama- 
tists,—select passages showing the pictorial and emotional powers of their writ- 
ers; but if in displaying the versifier’s control over situation we conceal his 
ability, or inability, to get from situation to situation, we disguise facts neces- 
sary for the student, and cast a false light upon our period. It is incumbent 
upon the literary historian or editor to lay before workers proof how didactic 
was the fifteenth century at the emotional moment, how clumsy in managing tran- 
sition, how crude in motiving action, how unable to release the subject in hand. 
Only from such a body of facts can we observe the irregular growth of English 
constructive power ; and only long continuous excerpts, if not wholes, can provide 
a basis for observation. Even carelessly edited texts, like those put forth by 
Ritson and by Halliwell, retain their place with scholars just because they make 
wholes available for study. 

But it has been impossible, however desirable, to place the whole of each 
of these texts before the student. Lydgate’s Dance Macabre can be, and is, re- 
produced complete; the 36,000 lines of his Fall of Princes must necessarily be 
illustrated by extracts; nor can we refuse to make such excerpts, because a theme 
so important in West-European literature, a work so influential on the Continent 
and in England, cannot be omitted from our survey. The Garland of Laurell is 
printed entire; but portions only are possible of Hawes’ Pastime, of Cavendish’s 
Visions, of Barclay’s Ship of Fools. Yet in all these cases the editor has en- 
deavored to give chapters in full, to illustrate the mode of connecting chapters, 
to show the movement of the author’s mind among his material. 

The great amount of space given to Lydgate may provoke question; but 
since it is our problem to study the formal expression of the age, no apology is 
needed. For in this one man are represented so many of the aspects of such 
verse in the first half of the century that its standardized expression can al- 
most be studied from him alone. 

Criticism will also be aroused by my refusal to treat most of this verse 
as rhythmical composition. The work of Lydgate, for instance, has been taken 
very seriously by specialists; and only the inaccessibility of texts has prevented 
more of the verse of the period from receiving careful analysis on the model 


PREFACE ix 


set up by German scholars. To such treatment I am for two reasons opposed. 
First, because the method is itself inadequate, a handling of verse line by line only 
and according to the number of syllables; secondly, because analysis is wasted 
upon a large portion of this verse, which is, e.g. in the Libel of English Policy, in 
Ripley’s Compend, in Hawes’ Pastime, sheer doggerel, guiltless of rhythm and con- 
scious only of an approaching rime. This latter condition does not arise because 
of the badness of texts, for in the cases of both Hardyng and Cavendish we have 
the author’s own manuscript, and yet the rhythm is as awkward as any of the period 
We can indeed study the attempts of Lydgate and Hoccleve to use Chaucer’s pen- 
tameter line-flow, and we can recognize with pleasure the rhythmic command of the 
Orléans or of the Palladius-translator and of the writer of the Lover’s Mass. But 
in most of this transitional work we have to note that a failure of sense-per- 
ception, a stale formality of simile and of phrase, accompanies this rhythmic pov- 
erty as its shadow,—or its substance. The cramping of the spirit by an environ- 
ment which it cannot conquer through observation is at the basis of the Transition’s 
failure to express, or indeed of a similar failure in any age. Given a partially- 
educated and insensitive group, obedient to external conditions, eager for moral 
and intellectual credit, and if it attempts expression, be it in the twentieth cen- 
tury or in the fifteenth, there will appear the same respect for the didactic, the 
same penchant for allegory, the same imitativeness and use of formulae, and the 
same failure to feel rhythm. 

The textual presentation is academic. The original manuscript or printed 
copy is followed without deviation except in a few cases where the student 
might be led astray; in such cases the inserted or altered word is bracketed and 
the actual reading given at the foot of the page. All other changes, now sug- 
gested or made by previous editors, are relegated to the Notes. Modern punc- 
tuation has not been introduced; the markings of the original are scrupulously 
retained. For while the page may thus lose in clarity for the general reader, 
it gains greatly for the student, who is then given his proper share in the editorial 
problem of following the medieval mind. And when examining sentence-structure 
thus, the worker learns far more than when accepting uncritically the conclusions 
of an editor. Not only can an editor, even the best of editors, hypnotize his 
readers into false notions of the author’s meaning, but the whole subject of 
Early English punctuation has been slighted and obscured because of such ac- 
ceptance, continued century after century. We have made it impossible to obtain 
information on medieval theories of pointing by refusing to print texts with their 
pointing undisturbed; and the reasons for our refusal are the same as those once 
considered valid against the reproduction of the early spelling——a matter long 
since settled. On all these accounts, the present editor has declined to impose 
modern punctuation here. 

It will also be noted that the texts are not “critical”. The establishment 
of a critical text, deduced from comparison of all existing copies of the work, 
suffers, and must always suffer, under two limitations. The surviving copies 
may be far indeed from the fittest; and in any case, the text constructed from 
them, though presumably antedating them, is not conclusively the original. It 


x ENGLISH VERSE 


is “X”; but the identity of X with Chaucer or with Lydgate or with another 
cannot be asserted. Hence the labor of constructing such an hypothetical “Ur- 
text”, although an admirable exercise in acumen, arrives nowhither unless the 
number of copies be large and clearly grouped, unless moreover they be for 
the most part honestly executed. The present editor feels that the principle of 
critical text-construction is not something to be invoked “semper, ubique, et ab 
omnibus”, but is to be applied according to mass and character of material. 
Some of the texts here assembled exist in but a single copy; of some we have 
a copy in the author’s own hand; several are poorly preserved; and the few 
which survive in a number of copies, like Walton’s Boethius, have received a 
treatment uniform with the others; that is, one text is printed verbatim et 
literatim, with mention of variants in the Notes. 

In nearly every case the copies have been made by the editor. For the 
Palladius-text the photograph of the Wentworth Wodehouse MS was used by a 
Bodleian copyist; the Hoccleve texts have been revised by the Keeper of Manu- 
scripts at the Henry E. Huntington Library, California, where the codices 
formerly Phillipps 8151 and Ashburnham Appendix cxxxiii now are. In this 
latter case errors in the Early English Text Society’s edition have thus been 
removed. 

The number of authors here represented has made it impossible to approach 
each text as would a specialist in that subject. No one of these introductions is, 
or attempts to be, exhaustive; no biography is fully given, no debatable point re- 
argued. The separate bibliographies are more complete, although the titles are 
condensed, and minor points left to the Dictionary of National Biography or to 
monumental editions like that of Skelton by Dyce. Similarly, in the glossary, 
it is assumed that the student has the New English Dictionary at hand, is fa- 
miliar with Chaucer, and has a working knowledge of Early English otherwise. 
Etymologies are not given, nor dialectal peculiarities discussed. 


I am indebted to the Press of Duke University, and especially to its editor-in- 
chief, Dr. Paull F. Baum, for the care and patience, the interested craftsmanship 
and scholarship, which they have devoted to this volume. 

E. Pst 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PREFACE 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 


The Two Periods of the “Transition’—The Struggle for Equilibrium in Each— 
The State of the West European Nations at the Close of the Fourteenth Century— 
The Rise of the Bourgeoisie—Chaucer and the Contending Forces—English Libra- 
ries and English Education at the Opening of the Fifteenth Century—Translation 
and Patronage—Song—The Sense of Rhythm—Rhythm in Chaucer and the English 
Chaucerians—Verse-Forms—The Scottish Chaucerians—Vocabulary—Narrative- 
Forms: Fabliau, Saint’s Legend, Allegory, Romance—Sensuous Perception— 
Prose—The Approach of Equilibrium 


Joun Watton: his Life and Work. 


The translation of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae 
A. Preface, Prologue, metre 1, prose 1 2 5 
B. Book ii, metre 5, The Former aoe 
C. Book ii, metre 7 
D. Book iii, metre 12, Orpheus j 
E. Preface to books iv and v; book iv, prose ‘t metre 1 


Tuomas Hoccteve: his Life and Work 


La Male Régle . 

To Somer 

To Carpenter . 

Three Roundels 

The Dialogue with a Biriend: eae 

In Praise of Chaucer, from The Regement of Bringes 
To Bedford 


Joun Lypcate: his Life and Work 


The Churl and the Bird 
Horns Away 
Bycorne and Ghieherscies j 
Prologue to the Siege of Thebes . 
The Dance Macabre : ; 
The French text 
Epithalamium for Gloucester 
Letter to Gloucester : ‘ 
The Fall of Princes: Introduction 
. General Prologue 
. Letter of Canace to Macarets, front book i 
Rome, Remember, final envoy to book ii 
Thanks to Gloucester, from prologue to book iii 
. The Tragedy of Caesar, book vi 
Octavian’s Revenge, book vi 
The Tragedy of Cicero, book vi 
. The Tragedy of Boethius, book viii 
. Extract from the Epilogue, book ix 


ADO OO > 


[ xi] 


vii 


102 
110 
113 
118 
124 
426 
142 
149 
150 
157 
164 
169 
174 
176 
179 
180 
185 
186 


xii CONTENTS 


BENEDICT BURGH 
Letter to John Lydgate . 


JoHN SHIRLEY 
Two Verse Tables of Contents 


ANONYMOUS 
A Reproof to Lydgate 


ANONYMOUS 


A translation of Palladius on Husbandry 
The Prologue . : : : ; 
A, B, C, D, Epilogue-Stanzas 


ANONYMOUS 
The Lover’s Mass 


ANONYMOUS 
Translations from Charles d’Orléans, with the French 


Joun HarpyNnc 
From the Chronicle: Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt 


ANONYMOUS 
London Lickpenny . 


ANONYMOUS 
The Libel of English Policy, lines 1-563 


GEORGE RIPLEY 
The Compend of Alchemy: Preface and Prohibicio 


ANONYMOUS 

The Court of Sapience: extracts and summary 
STEPHEN Hawes 

The Pastime of Pleasure: extracts and summary 


Wittram NEvILL AND Ropert COPLAND 


Dialogue between Nevill and Copland 
The Castell of Pleasure: extracts and summary 


ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


The Ship of Fools: extracts . 3 
The Prologue to the Eclogues ; Eclogue i iv 


JoHN SKELTON 
The Garland of Laurell 


GEORGE CAVENDISH 
The Metrical Visions: extracts 


Henry, Lorp Morey 


Translation of Petrarch’s Triumph of Love, book i 
A “Sonnet” on the Psalms ; ‘ : : 


NorTES 
List OF ABBREVIATIONS: SELECT REFERENCE LIstT 


SELECT GLOSSARY AND FINDING List 


188 


191 


198 


202 
206 


207 


214 


233 


237 


240 


252 


258 


268 


287 
289 


298 
312 


342 


368 


383 
391 
392 
540 


553 


Page 51. 
Page 67. 
Page 75. 
Page 101, 
Page 154, 
Page 209, 
Page 216, 
Page 260. 
Page 398. 
Page 399. 


Page 400. 
Page 412. 
Page 421. 
Page 423. 
Page 451, 
Page 461, 
Page 543, 


Page 561, 
Page 585, 


ENGLISH VERSE 


BETWEEN 


CHAUCER AND SURREY 


ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 


Line 105 belongs with preceding stanza. 

The first footnote belongs with line 8 of To Carpenter. 

In note on 2093, read lyf instead of lwf. 

line 5 from bottom, for Peachan read Peacham. 

line 7, for arblastic read arblastis. 

line 14 from bottom, for 1371 read 1372. 

line 19, for was run read was to run. 

Above text insert [Prologue to Book 1]. 

Delete the note on line 24. 

To note on lines 3-5 add: as in the Oxford 1911 edition. 

In note on line 22, for odde read odre. 

To note on line 28 add: or of Castalia on Parnassus. 

In the fourth line of note on 17-22, for later read earlier. 

In second line of note on 262, for To walk ungirt read To say that she 
walks ungirt. 

To note on line 427 add: See Curry’s Chaucer and Mediaeval Science, 
Oxford 1926, pp. 20 ff. 

line 3, for sulleness read sullenness. 

to line 4 below heading of Reproof to Lydgate add: see reproduction 
by Brusendorff facing p. 264. To matter of second paragraph ibid. 
add: The Chance of the Dice was pubd. by me in EnglStud. vol. 59. 

add: ExamVirtue. Hawes’ poem The Example of Virtue, for which 
see p. 271 here. 

under dede add asterisk to Thebes 58. 

under syngler add asterisk to FaPrin A 409. 





GENERAL INTRODUCTION 


The hundred and fifty years of the English “Transition” may fairly be 
treated in two periods, divided politically at the battle of Bosworth Field and 
intellectually at the establishment of printing. In the former of these periods, 
from 1400 to 1485, the Crown was long in dispute, the feudal nobility absorbed 
in foreign and in dynastic wars, the Church weakened by its dependence on the 
Crown, the commonalty engaged in using its first chance at accumulation of 
money. A shift of class-balance was in progress as result of the divisions and 
weakening of the landholders, of the economic power gained by the bourgeoisie ; 
and English society was profoundly unsettled because of this readjustment. In 
the latter period, from 1485 on, the Tudor despotism established itself above a 
crippled aristocracy and Church, with the tacit consent of a commonalty not 
yet politically coherent and conscious. The education of the bourgeoisie pro- 
ceeded slowly, taking at first a limited and pedagogic form, while courtly ex- 
pression retained in large part the formulae of an earlier age. 

Through the former period, ecclesiastical and chivalric standards of taste 
were still in force. Polite literature was formal, imitative, didactic; drama 
and the romance both submitted to pressure, and the traces of secular folk- 
expression outside the ballad are small. The numerous class of ecclesiastically- 
trained writers show the repressive, inhibiting power of the Church on letters; 
the Church contemned, as always, the human senses, contemned direct observation 
of any sort; it favored the symbol rather than the fact, and approved the didactic 
without any criticism of its quality. Its contribution to English literature was 
that of Christianity as a whole,—the idea of the struggle of vicious and virtuous 
impulses in the human heart,—an idea alien to the antique world. The Teutonic 
races obtained part of their intellectual discipline through the self-examination 
required by the Church; but the Church’s opinion of the human senses acted 
as an inhibition to any real study of man by man; it created as sharp a cleavage 
in the possible whole of mental development as existed between the adoration of 
the Virgin Mother and the monastic horror of woman. 

The medieval synthesis, both ecclesiastical and political, held firm while 
' the Western world was still politically and linguistically a unit; it relaxed as 
the integration of separate nations and tongues progressed, a relaxation doubtless 
due in part to the difficulty of intercommunication over Western Europe. Upon 
this slow process another factor, the economic, acted as accelerant; with the use 
of coined money and the rise of an international banking system, democratic de- 
vices furthered by the aristocratic Crusades, the anti-synthetic particularistic 
tendency increased. As English commerce became more important, as the trad- 
ing towns grew, as the dealers in wool accumulated wealth, the English bour- 
geoisie rose in power. Human ambition and human self-assertiveness, long denied 
expression to the “demos” by the rigid frame of feudalism, found opportunity ; 
and during the Transition, especially during the second of its two periods, the 


[3] 


+ ENGLISH VERSE 


bourgeoisie, vigorous, pushing, unscrupulous, with little education but with wide 
and widening human experience, comes more and more to the center of the stage. 
Like all natures of high animalism, no education, and unformulated ideas, the 
bourgeois was iconoclastic, insensitive, and greedy of emphasis; violent emotion- 
alism, coarse jest, attack on all forms of the established order, appealed to him as 
they appeal to the new “proletariat” public today. Even at his worst, however, 
he was undulled by machine-service and by machine-made noise; his nature at its 
best is seen in the work of his hands and in his impulse to song. 

As this confusion of tendencies, this strife between the overborne older order 
and the aggressive middle class, slowly worked to a height, it met incoming Hu- 
manism. A new cohesive force replaced the dissolving medieval theory. Every 
aspect of Humanism made for stability; a clarified expression, a standard of 
taste, a faith in man, were offered to a public sorely in need of them; and the 
concentration of interest upon the individual which characterized the Renaissance 
sweetened for the bourgeoisie the gift of Humanism which the Renaissance 
brought. It required time to train the new reading class; but as a small group 
of dramatic poets matured on the combined bourgeois and humanistic stimuli, 
the London public received the benefit in the theater, which taught through the 
emotions and the ear as well as the eye. To that conflict of good and evil in the 
human heart which was fundamental in Christian teaching, and to the human 
experience which the average man had acquired in the street and in the market- 
place there was now added the Renaissance feeling for form, the Renaissance 
conception of the humane and the beautiful. Ideals are again revered; and 
men’s imaginations, raised by such full faith in man as that of Spenser, are led 
to a newer and greater Romantic synthesis in Shakespeare, to a fusion not merely 
of human relations in a system, but of the seer with the thing seen. But in the 
years between Chaucer’s death and the Elizabethan florescence, before the 
middle class had taken form or received education, English literature was in 
the hands of the conservatives. 

Conservatism is as fundamental a force in literature and in character as is 
individualism, and as necessary. The greatest moments of artistic expression, 
whether in peoples or in the single workman, have been those of equipoise be- 
tween these two forces. Such moments are brief and rare; there is usually 
a predominance of one element, a predominance determined often by conditions 
other than literary. The rigidity of the structure of feudalism, denying expres- 
sion to all of lower rank, maintained the force of conservatism in literature for 
centuries. Had the English bourgeoisie obtained the upper hand in letters as 
well as in life, the chaos following on the shift might have been greater.. But the 
incoming power of Humanism, almost coincident with the definite emergence of 
the bourgeoisie, equalized the thrust of individualism; and we have in the 
Elizabethan age one of the world’s great moments of equipoise between the two 
contending forces. That it manifests itself in drama and in lyric is not sur- 
prising; for the agreement in spirit between the citizen community of Athens and 
the citizen community of Elizabethan London favored in both environments 
that drama which in each case had germinated within the limits of the established 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 5 


religion. In the outburst of individualism of our own day, accompanying the 
emergence of a new social class, we have an excess uncontrolled as yet by any 
conservative or humanistic force; and the unsettlement today of language and 
of morality, alongside the unsettlement and exaggeration of literary expression, 
are markedly parallel to the phenomena of the Transition. 

Each of these social reconstructions, reconstructions which are but attempts 
to reach a balance, is confronted by the problem of educating a public new to 
power, untrained and indocile. And the psychology of human beings in the 
mass, of the “crowd-mind,” is in each case an additional element in the struggle 
towards adjustment. The crowd-mind is self-assertive, but it is also self-pro- 
tective, an impulse which is evident especially in the tendency to imitation, to 
the preservation of a standard once accepted. No matter how strong the indi- 
vidualistic assertion may be, it has no sooner obtained a hearing than it hardens 
into a creed. A process of stereotyping, insisted upon by the group, follows 
close upon revolt, close upon each attainment of balance; and how long its pat- 
tern endures will depend in great part upon external conditions. If an ecclesi- 
astical and feudal framework is imposed upon society, as was the case all 
through the Middle Ages, literature will be standardized and held rigid by that 
framework. Should the inhibition be less heavy, as in fourteenth-century Eng- 
land, there may be here and there an attainment of balance, as in Chaucer, who 
represents in his isolated self the adjustment between group and individual, 
between book-education and human experience, between what George Eliot 
calls “separateness” and “communication.” It is rare indeed to find a piece of 
literature which has not been influenced by social pressures and inhibitions, but 
the effect of this potent factor on the course of a nation’s expression has not yet 
been studied. A view of English poetry which should regard it less as an evolu- 
tion than as a constant struggle of the spirit against successive group-inhibitions 
would be of interest; nowhere would there be more material than in the period 
at which we are looking. 

The society in which stereotypes prevail is one carefully and successfully 
guarded against change. It is not by chance that the two great modern social 
readjustments have each coincided with an expansion of the world in men’s minds. 
The period of sailing out upon the oceans, in the late fifteenth century, is matched 
in the late nineteenth by immensely increased facilities for land travel, and by the 
conquest of undersea and upper air yet later. Such extensions of the ordinary 
man’s horizon have incalculable consequences. They mean, of course, more 
human as well as more geographical knowledge; they mean increase of travel 
and commerce, exchange of ideas, enlargement of sympathies. But they bring 
difficulties as well as advantages. It is not that the laws of human nature, in- 
cluding the urge to imitate and to standardize, undergo any modification; but 
the speed and variability of their functioning increase enormously. In our own 
time the demolition of space-barriers which puts every variety of stimulus sim- 
ultaneously before the people, and the articulate assertiveness of all classes in a 
democratic society, have tangled the threads of tendency to a degree hitherto 
unimagined. The necessity for swift and constantly repeated adaptation, in a 


6 ENGLISH VERSE 


society thus exposed to multifarious stimuli, is as disintegrating to personality 
as to literary standards. Beside the conditions of literature today, those of the 
fifteenth century are simplicity itself. In that last hour before the advent of 
printing and before the voyage of Columbus, the forces of established con- 
servatism could offer to a new type, literary or religious, a resistance denser and 
more general than any novelty today will encounter. Looking over the history 
of our literature, we see that what we call periods were much longer before the 
invention of printing, that they shortened as commercial intercourse was facili- 
tated, and that with cheap newspapers, steam, and the radio, the weakening of 
resistance to change has reached the danger point. The physical cause of this 
weakening is the immensely enhanced facility of human intercourse, which not 
only permits but compels a choice of stimuli at every moment, weakens the 
power of attention, and divides the individual against himself. The reduction 
in personality is as marked, in a hurried huddled age, as is the confusion of 
standards. 

The Transition, defended yet awhile by the forces of feudalism against 
an uneducated, even if rising, middle class, is, as I have said, a simple problem 
compared to that of our own day. The two Transition publics and the two modes 
of expression, with the hybrids between them, can be traced with comparative 
ease. One body of production, the conservative and stereotyped, perpetuates 
earlier themes and forms; it draws its support from the privileged classes and 
accepts the dictation of a patronage which knows only traditional types of ex- 
pression. As the years pass, the control of this patronage weakens, the force 
of imitation loses strength to resist increeping bourgeois qualities, and hybrids 
appear, as well as clumsy satire, jest, and description. This attempted description 
is for the most part of human or low-life figures, exaggerated often and often 
as overdone in another way as were the earlier stock-pattern figures. But poor 
and violent though the portraiture may be, it reaches out after real life; it at- 
tempts to use the senses, to redress the balance so long weighed towards the 
stereotype. And when this excess is in its turn reduced and steadied by Hu- 
manism, there is a brilliant though brief period of poise. 

It is with the first of these three phases, the formal literature of the Tran- 
sition, that we are concerned. The popular expression of the early sixteenth 
century is beyond our purview, as is the Renaissance. Yet though we em- 
phasize the stereotyping society of the earlier Transition as principal cause of its 
failure in literary vitality, we have not thus given all the reasons for that failure. 
Even though we add the isolation of England during the Hundred Years’ War, 
we have not fully explained her intellectual weakness then. The war indeed 
made itself felt on letters in the barrier which it set up between England and 
her nearest neighbors, in its denial of human intercommunication. If Mr. Belloc 
can say of Roman England that her separation from the Continent by barbarian 
Roman soldiers “lowered the general process of civilization in the eastern and 
starved into a still lower standard the isolated western part,” this was equally 
true of the sundering force of the French war in the fifteenth century. But 
neither that war nor the contest of the Roses is the sole cause of English literary 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 7 


conditions at the time. The tightening of inhibitions by the small arrogant litera- 
ture-producing class has its effect in weakening English poetry; the break-down 
of the aristocracy through war, the rise of the bourgeoisie through increase of 
fluid wealth, account for the unsettlement of standards and the coarsening of 
taste; the enforced separation from the Continent delays education. But none 
of these, nor all taken together, tell the full story of the English Transition. 

The “content” of any literary period varies in reality and power with the 
weight of conviction and enthusiasm behind it. Carlyle, discussing the age of 
Louis XV, remarked that “when the general life-element became so unspeakably 
phantasmal, it was difficult for any man to be real.” Morley says of Voltaire’s 
Henriade: “To form a long narrative of heroic adventure in animated, picturesque, 
above all in sincere verse, is an achievement reserved for men with a steadier 
glow, a firmer, simpler, more exuberant and more natural poetic feeling than 
was possible in that time of mean shifts, purposeless public action, and pitiful 
sacrifice of private self-respect.” And Santayana may also be quoted: “When 
chaos has penetrated into the moral being of nations, they can hardly be ex- 
pected to produce great men.” The new public of England was as uneducated 
morally and ethically as it was mentally. It brought to secular literature no high 
purpose, no faith in man, no sincerity; its narrow bourgeois greed, its measure- 
ment of life in terms of power and money, debarred it from giving out as a 
people any real inspiration. And the men to whom England had to look as her 
spokesmen were equally devoid of real inspiration; they were trained indeed to 
some extent, but Church-trained, set firmly in the clerical mould, and as scanted 
of liberal education as their public. Such writers had not either element of 
literature; neither they nor their readers felt high purpose, and they themselves 
possessed no craftsmanship. Milton’s “various style” and “holy rapture” were 
both lacking. There have been times in English literature when one of these 
elements has alone sufficed to keep a body of poetry stable. In the spiritually mea- 
ger age of Queen Anne, brilliancy of manipulation compensated in part for a 
lack of sincerity, and Pope stamped an alloy of mean intrinsic value to pass 
current for generations. But Lydgate, for example, had no such ability. And 
though without the one basis, spiritual or intellectual, a body of literature may 
stand, it cannot when devoid of both vital sincerity and technical excellence. 
The weakness of the fifteenth century is no marvel; what were marvellous were 
the growth of anything beautiful in verse under such conditions. 

We do not endeavor, as appears from the foregoing, to explain the fifteenth 
century as the outcome of the fourteenth. The doctrine of “continuous entity” 
has value, but a mass of people moves not on the lines of the physical organ- 
ism. The fifteenth century is not solely a degeneration nor an inheritance from 
the years before it; it is not solely a period of gestation for a coming birth. The 
Elizabethan Renaissance is less truly an upleap than an attainment of equilib- 
rium after long effort at balance, an equilibrium at last made possible by the 
break in social inhibitions, the advance in the new public’s education, the enlarged 
view of the world, and a more generous ideal of life. These are all conditions 


8 ENGLISH VERSE 


external, in a sense, to literature; and it is now our problem to observe in more 
detail how such conditions formed in later medieval England. 

During the ten centuries before the discovery of America the slowly in- 
tegrating countries of Western Europe had developed on varying economic and 
political lines. The long sea-coasts of Italy and Britain, with their Oriental and 
Dutch frontages, had stimulated sea-borne trade. In Italy the growth of the tex- 
tile industry was closely connected with the rise of that trade, and the two fos- 
tered each other. England did little weaving until the mid-fourteenth century ; 
with her, minerals, and above all raw wool, were the export staples. This con- 
dition favored a large rural and a smaller trading class; and the habit of mind 
which is developed by artisan-skill was of late awakening in Britain. Her turn 
in the world’s manufacturing economy came with the utilization of her iron and 
her coal, when Italy’s primacy in textile work passed from her because of 
her lack of the minerals so abundant farther north. 

The political development of the two countries was also very different. 
Italy’s position on the Mediterranean Sea, the heart of ancient civilization, the 
seat of the Roman Empire and later of the Roman Church in her peninsula, the 
number and immediacy of her political contacts, the continuity of her intellectual 
life, made her widely different from insular, remote, untutored Britain. England’s 
political and mental history hardly began until she was drawn, by the Norman 
Conquest, into the circle of the growing nations. There she found Italy, France, 
and the Low Countries her far more experienced and matured sisters. Her mer- 
chant trade built up slowly, and for generations her intellectual dependence was 
directly or indirectly on France, her conqueror and teacher. 

It had been the great task of France to preserve the Latin tongue and to 
discipline the expression of Western Europe through her schools of philosophy 
and dialectic. Politically her position in the fourteenth century was midway 
between that of Italy and that of England. She was not split, as was Italy, 
into a half-hundred of jealous and contentious statelets, each torn also by local 
party strife; but her noble class was more numerous, compared with her bour- 
geoisie, than in England, owing to the social system which made every French 
younger son of aristocratic family also noble and privileged. The untaxed 
wealth of the Roman Church was much greater in France than in England; and 
after the division of territory among the sons of King John, the quarrels 
among the princes thus aggrandized and the Crown became violent. So far as 
letters and art were concerned, the rivalry between Burgundy, Anjou, Orléans, 
Berri, and the Ile de France stimulated the work of chroniclers, translators, 
painters, carvers, and scribes, even as was the case in the Italian peninsula among 
the rival despots. But the mass of the French people was heavily taxed, more 
so than in other countries, and lacked the political consciousness so swiftly 
developed in smaller and less agricultural states like Athens or Florence or 
Flanders. There was no check upon the dominant classes, and these continued 
in a round of imitation, so far as literature was concerned. Where the people 
could receive education, as in the handicrafts, art was vital; the architecture, 
the glass and metal work, the tapestry of the later Middle Ages, all bear wit- 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 9 


ness to this. But the exclusively aristocratic literature of France suffered from 
the sterility of the aristocracy and the Church. 

Communal development advanced faster in the small states north of France. 
The territory we now know as Holland and Belgium was in the fourteenth cen- 
tury divided into a group of thriving counties and duchies,—Brabant, Flanders, 
Hainault, Seeland, Holland, etc. The coast state of Flanders, in especial, was 
almost independent of the Empire, and her busy cities had grown rich by the 
manufacture of England’s wool. During the latter fourteenth and early fifteenth 
centuries the French dukes of Burgundy came into possession, by marriage or 
by usurpation, of most of these little territories; and the marriage of Mary of 
Burgundy, sole heir of Charles the Bold, with Maximilian of Austria, carried the 
whole great Burgundian power to her grandson, the Emperor Charles the Fifth. 
The long years’ struggle of the gallant little states of the North with Charles’ 
son, Philip of Spain, is, however, no part of our history; at the period we are 
considering they were opulent manufacturing communities, famous for their 
glass, metal, and textile work, for their painters in oil, for their wealth, their 
growing political confidence and impatience of despotic control. Whatever their 
artificial dynastic bonds with France or with the Empire, the whole economic 
life of the Low Countries depended on England, from which they drew the 
wool for their weaving. And the connection of the two shores was other than 
commercial; the marriage of Edward III of England to Philippa of Hainault, 
and the constant intercourse between the English and the Burgundian courts in 
the next century, while Burgundy was supporting England against France, had 
almost as much influence on the arts and letters, the book-collecting and trans- 
lating of England, as the similarity in trade-interests had on the bourgeoisie of 
the two countries. It was from the French-speaking court of the Burgundian 
dukes that much of England’s fifteenth-century “culture” came; and it was from 
the court of a Burgundian duke and his English duchess that Caxton returned 
to London, carrying the Low-Country art of printing. 

England’s insular freedom from European political problems had left her, 
during the years since her royal house had become thoroughly English, in a 
position to grow more evenly and healthily than any Continental country. At 
the middle of the fourteenth century all signs were promising. In political, in 
literary, in social expression, she was full of vitality. The progress of Parliament 
towards control of government, the assertion of the nation against the Papacy 
in the statutes of Provisors and Premunire, the growing prosperity of English 
traders, the freer intercourse with the world, seemed to mean an awakened and 
intelligent group-consciousness. At that moment the Biblical drama, the bal- 
lads, the revival of the native verse, the rise of reforming feeling and of mystical 
thought, the technical power of Chaucer, all gave promise of a genuine literary 
florescence. Just then, it may be, if political class-agreements had continued 
the loosening of medieval inhibitions, if intercourse with the South of Europe 
had left the road open for intellectual growth, we might have had a noble na- 
tional expression. Instead, everything conspired to check the development which 
seemed so certain, and to set the stage for a very different drama. 


10 ENGLISH VERSE 


First in the sequence of untoward events was the Black Death. How large 
a proportion of England’s population died in the series of epidemics which 
swept West Europe at intervals from 1348 on, we do not know; but it is clear 
that she lost so heavily from her working class that there was a sudden and a 
permanent shortage of labor, reflected by a rise in wages and in prices. The 
landowners, who largely constituted Parliament, refused to recognize the in- 
evitable; and that energy which had been expended by them on control of king 
and nobles was diverted to a class-struggle with labor. Ten years before the 
first great wave of the plague, also, the disastrous Hundred Years’ War with 
France had begun. ” 

A strong and ambitious sovereign might have turned this rupture between 
landholders and commonalty to his own advantage. But the later years of 
Edward III were weak; the folly of Richard II brought him to ruin; and affairs 
weltered in chaos while peasants and Lollards were contending with landlords 
and Church. In the early fifteenth century we find England with her throne 
occupied by the keen and determined Lancastrians, her Church freed from Lol- 
lard criticism and sunk into apathy, her peasantry beaten into sullen dejection, 
the inhibiting feudal framework clamped again upon her literary expression, and 
all trace of her intellectual vigor gone with the barring of the Channel, the death 
of Chaucer, the death of religious freedom, the death of national unity. 

All unknown to king and noblesse, however, there was building up with their 
sanction a power which should undermine their rule more completely than the 
labor unrest. Where public and private obligations could be reckoned and col- 
lected in money, the country availing itself of that convenience was moving 
towards a time when political relations would cease to depend upon tenure of 
land; in other words, the feudal system was about to fall before the power of 
the bourgeoisie. There was no protest in this case from landholders or from 
Church, for that payment in coin which became the basis of trading prosperity 
was a convenience recognized alike by crusading nobles, absentee landholders, 
and the tax-collectors of the Roman Church. 

On this new material foundation arose the bourgeoisie, in all its impulses 
antagonistic to the social order which had endeavored to hold it in check,—anti- 
feudal, anti-chivalric, anti-clerical, impatient, iconoclastic, ribald. Whatever the 
shortcomings of the falling order, it had nominally professed ideals,—loyalty to 
God, to the sovereign, to the beloved lady. But the rising bourgeoisie, during 
the long ensuing struggle with moribund feudalism, served no ideals; it had no 
apparent motive except self-aggrandizement. There was nothing in it of the 
respect for the past as a Golden Age, which chivalry had felt, nothing of the 
modern devotion to the future of the race, to the betterment of generations yet 
unborn. Its deficiency in enthusiasms, in convictions, in devotions, left it unen- 
dowed with literary force, as it was also undisciplined by training. The renewal 
of the Hundred Years’ War under Henry V was no struggle against a Persian 
invader, a Spanish invader. Its motive was frankly lust of dominion. In 
speaking of the effect of the Persian war on Greece, Bury has said that in that 
war was illustrated “the operation of a general law which governs human so- 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 11 


cieties. Pressure from without tends to produce unity within.”  Fifteenth- 
century England, however, was not rising to defend herself; she was not even 
venturing, as did Tudor England, into undiscovered countries and uncharted 
seas. She was seeking to aggrandize herself at the expense of an equal, a neigh- 
bor, a sister. Whatever Henry V’s arguments of hereditary right, before his in- 
vasion of France in 1415, he appealed as much to the baser passions of the nation 
as did Bismarck. And the penalty which England paid was a spiritual one; she 
paid in the impoverishment of her literature, the deterioration of her Church, 
the delay of her emancipation and of her education. All that forming literary 
impulse which was just ready for the discipline of Humanism was stifled for 
many years. For not only did England’s intellectual resources, still limited be- 
cause of her belated admission to the European storehouse of thought, receive 
little or no food during most of the fifteenth century, but there was from decade 
to decade a steady loss in intellect and taste, caused by the ceaseless imitation, 
the starved inbreeding, of a race of ill-nurtured clerics. England in the fifteenth 
century, to quote Carlyle’s phrase, saw life as “a thing whereby to do day-labor 
and earn wages”; she saw literature as a means of “eschewing idleness”, in the 
current monkish phrase. And neither view ever inspired a soul to real utterance. 

Both fundamental elements of a national literature were thus lacking in 
fifteenth-century England, the pressure of generous popular feeling and the 
presence of the technical artist. The previous century had felt the stirrings of 
high emotions, and had uttered them, often awkwardly enough, through the bal- 
ladists, the mystics, Wyclif, Langland. One supreme artist, one man of both 
genius and technique, that century had possessed in Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer 
had certain essentials of artistic mastery as completely in his grasp as had the 
Greeks from whom he differed so widely. He knew the superiority of balance 
over symmetry; he understood and practiced restraint in expression; he studied 
contrast as no man but Shakespeare, in England, has studied it; he recognized 
the power of the selected detail; his senses were alert and keen. But neither 
these essentials nor his amazing technical mastery of his material could be com- 
municated, and his touch was too light and shrewd to guide his followers. 

In that technical mastery no comparison with his English predecessors is 
possible. His management of verse-flow, the vigor of his imagination, his per- 
fect acquaintanceship with the creatures of his art and his power of bringing 
his readers into their presence, his understanding of his audience, have no proto- 
type in England. We term such qualities “modern”; yet medieval Chaucer is as 
well. He used unhesitatingly and naturally many themes and forms which seem 
to us absurd; but by using this familiar material he kept himself understanded 
of the many, as Shakespeare did. In both of them was the “communication” 
with their fellows, and in both of them the “separateness” of genius. 

And in yet another way Chaucer was a composite. He worked often with 
an eye on the aristocratic patron, used often aristocratic themes; but more and 
more, as he grows older, is the power released in him bourgeois. His kinship 
is with Boccaccio, with the French fabliau-makers, with Chrétien de Troyes or 
Jean de Meun. Like them his perceptions are quick, shrewd, amused; like them 


12 ENGLISH VERSE 


his study is by preference of human situation. Like them he excels in the 
smaller structural qualities; like them he makes little or no attempt to raise 
the pitch of life, as romance and allegory do, and as the bourgeois spirit never 
does. Yet simply and solely bourgeois, of the bourgeois ignorance of letters, the 
bourgeois-Philistine contempt for whatever it fails to understand, Chaucer was 
not. Always he is the composite, bourgeois enough to meet the bourgeoisie, 
courtly enough to meet the courtier, of genius sufficing to understand and to fuse 
both and to carry both into permanent literature. Bookman by taste and business 
man by profession; not deeply read but passionately addicted to reading; neither 
philosopher nor thinker, yet observer of everything human, interested in every- 
thing human, tolerant of everything human, without desire to teach or to preach; 
pliant to the literary customs of his time, yet understanding how to comply 
and to surpass with the same gesture,—Chaucer, like Shakespeare, struck a 
balance between individual assertion and conservative acceptance. 

The century after his death saw the bourgeois and the aristocratic tenden- 
cies, which he had united, fall apart. Of the two publics into which England 
then split, publics more clearly defined after the establishment of printing, it 
was the aristocratic and formal which paid Chaucer deference and strove to 
imitate him. The group of his acknowledged followers had before them the 
same material, human and literary, which had lain before him; but their handling 
of books and of life is entirely different from his. No English “Chaucerian” 
looks at the written page as Chaucer had looked at it; there is only one man in 
the next age who is steeped in a book as was Chaucer,—Henryson in his Fables. 
Henryson, in his capacity of schoolmaster, must have taught and retaught Aesop 
until the Fox and the Wolf and the Cadger rose before him in their habit as 
they lived. But Lydgate, to take the most prolific of Chaucer’s English admirers, 
has only a superficial contact with books, even with those he translates; he does 
not remember obvious facts about the Canterbury Tales, great as is the admira- 
tion he professes for it. His eye slides off the written page, slides off the 
human face; his senses are not alert, his interest not alive. No evidence is before 
us, and none may ever be obtainable, as to the actual condition of the human 
senses in any poetic period. But the appeal to them in “Romantic” periods is as 
marked as the lack of appeal to them when literature is held in stereotyped 
forms. It may be a fundamental fact in the Transition that its writers were 
so generally without visual and auditory sensitiveness. Description is abundant, 
but it moves in formulae; words are abundant, but the pregnant epithet, the 
revealing phrase, is not there. Chaucer was not one of the word-sensitive, as was 
Shakespeare or Keats; he cannot speak of “ardent marigolds” or of “warmed 
jewels”, but nevertheless his senses are not prisoners to formula. Whether it 
was Lydgate’s ecclesiastical habit of mind, or the pressure on him of translation 
done to order, or his own temperamental sluggishness, which dulled him, we 
do not know; but his attention, his perception, his expression, are always blunted 
and diffused. 

He had, however, more than many writers of his time, the access to books. 
The age was one of book-accumulation in England, as in Burgundy and in 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 13 


France. Henry VI laid the foundations of the immense Royal collection of man- 
uscripts now in the British Museum, and his uncle Humphrey of Gloucester 
presented his books to the University of Oxford. Balliol College, Oxford, re- 
ceived from her son William Grey, bishop of Ely, about two hundred volumes 
he had! collected, three-quarters of which are still there. John Tiptoft Earl of 
Worcester, also a Balliol man, purchased so many books south of the Alps that 
he was said to have despoiled Italy in order to enrich England. He too gave 
books to Oxford. And at Oxford, until the dissolution of the monasteries, was 
the great library formed by Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham (died in 1345), 
an ardent amateur of books, as his friend Petrarch describes him, and ?author 
of the Philobiblon. Outside Oxford, too, was ample book-supply, especially 
in the Benedictine monasteries; and no one of these was better stocked than 
Lydgate’s own house of Bury St. Edmunds. 

Nor were royalty and the monastic houses the only book-lovers in Eng- 
land. We have still to decipher and arrange the evidence afforded by coats of 
arms painted in the books of their owners, which may reconstruct in part for 
us the collections of the Percies, the Stanleys, the Sinclairs, etc. And from the 
bequests in wills we can sometimes trace the passing of precious volumes from 
Sir John Morton to the Countess of Westmoreland, sometimes the bequest of the 
Canterbury Tales or of “Bochas” by one plain English citizen to another. The 
fifteenth century in England was not poor in the number of books from which 
sustenance could be drawn. The vibrating body and the transmitting medium 
were there, as they had been in the fourteenth century; the difference was in the 
receiving ear. To the very verge of the age of Elizabeth there were English- 
men full of enthusiasm for study, full of enthusiasm for travel, acquiring books, 
translating ; but their efforts to express themselves can be classed as poetry only 
because of the accident of rime. Not all of Lord Morley’s interest in Petrarch 
can make his translations endurable; the five years which Osbern Bokenam spent 
in Italy in no wise mitigated the clumsiness of his utterance; and neither Agin- 
court nor his Italian travels inspired John Hardyng to one rhythmical or readable 
line. What Cardinal Newman called “a haziness of intellectual vision” came, 
in the fifteenth century, from the same cause which Newman specified for his 
own time,—the lack of a really good education. It was the speaker’s failure 
to see, to hear, to make fresh and independent comparisons, which deprived him 
of the power to understand or to express, which doomed his style to» weakness 
and muddlement. Any form of education which quickened the perceptions of 
the English patron and the English clerk, or which could refine the taste of the 
bourgeois, would have served late medieval England, and did ultimately reach 
it in the form of drama; but from the inherited routine of study no stimulus 
came. 

Higher education, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was obtainable 
in England at the monastic schools and universities and at the Inns of Court. 
Something more like a “finishing-school” training was to be found in great houses 
like that of John of Gaunt; a youth taken as page in such a household would 
become a complete courtier, able to speak and write French and a little Latin, 


14 ENGLISH VERSE 


to touch the lute, and to gather as much more knowledge as he could draw from 
the foreign-born physician or astrologer or Latin secretary who was so frequently 
to be found in the entourage of a great noble. The university man was definitely 
a logician or theologian, trained to the shaping of rhetorical periods or to scholastic 
argument in Latin; he often divided his later years between the penning of Latin 
letters for diplomats and a Church post given him as reward for secretarial duty. 
The lawyer received a more humane education, and may have lived a fuller life. 
Sir John Fortescue’s classic account, although not particularized, tells us that in 
1468-70, when he wrote, the training given by the Inns of Court included not 
only law and sacred and profane history, but singing, dancing, “and such other 
accomplishments as are usually practiced at Court.” If Chaucer were a member 
of the Inner Temple, as now seems possible, his education was neither that of 
the desultory courtier nor of the secretarial monk; he must have learned how to 
mix with men as well as how to read many books. No match for him in per- 
sonality came out of the Inns of Court in the fifteenth century; but whatever the 
determining power of Chaucer’s own genius on his growth, some part of the 
difference between him and Lydgate, for example, may be due to the sharpening 
and clarifying of the one mind, the dulling and relaxing of the other, by the 
mental discipline received in young manhood. 

The breaking-down of the difference between the two English publics, the 
beginnings of Humanism, are apparent first in the spread of secondary schools; 
and to this educational advance the new art of printing made early response. 
Caxton, with his strong personal interest in romantic narrative and his own ac- 
tivity as a translator, allied himself by preference with aristocratic patrons, with 
men of wealth. Only by such alliance, indeed, could he have published his am- 
bitious folios. He tells us in one of his invaluable prefaces (to the Golden 
Legend) that the Earl of Arundel, when ordering the work, had promised him 
a buck and a doe each year, and to take a “reasonable number of copies.” His 
issuance of Cicero’s De Senectute was at Sir John Fastolfe’s command; the Mirror 
of the World was printed for Hugh Brice, afterward Lord Mayor of London; 
and his earliest enterprise, the Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, undertaken 
while he was yet in Flanders, was at the command of Margaret duchess of 
Burgundy. The French versions used by Caxton for this last and for the 
Cicero had themselves been executed for ducal patrons; no man, indeed, could 
devote himself to such undertakings without assurance of support; and much of 
the formal large-scale literary production of the fifteenth century depended upon 
the taste of wealthy men. Caxton’s successor, de Worde, was a more practical 
and less intellectual man than his master; under him and Richard Pynson the 
character of the London press changes, and reflects the state of the open market, 
the spread of education, the taste of the smaller customer. Gordon Duff states 
that of the ca.640 books printed by de Worde between 1500 and ?1535, over two 
hundred were school books. De Worde’s hundred and fifty or so of poems and 
romances, beside this textbook production, shows how definitely a new sort of 
patron had appeared. 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 15 


But whatever increase took place in the number of schools and of school- 
books, in the second half of our period, the mass of the English people was still 
little affected by education. It was not by book-experience that they learned, but 
by life-experience, by enlarged discourse and enlarged intercourse among men. 
For this the growth of trade, of travel, and of the towns was responsible. Not 
that there was any marked increase in the number of pilgrims to foreign shrines, 
or any clear effect on English culture caused by the travel of English gentlemen 
and scholars to Italy. It was the many smaller and less obvious factors which 
counted; not the spectacular arrival of Erasmus in 1497, not the sojourn of 
Poggio, so much as e.g. the settlement near Winchester of Italian workers in 
metal and plaster. It was not so much the presence in every great house of 
foreign secretaries, nor even the necessity for dealing with Flemish woolbuyers 
and Genoese moneylenders, as it was the extending of every citizen’s horizon 
by enlarged buying power, repeated journeys near home, safer roads, wider 
acquaintance, aroused curiosity. The freer circulation of money and the increase 
of trade as compared with agriculture pushed the key of bourgeois life nearer to 
that of the privileged classes, just as the Ford car and the highway system are 
pushing the change today. 

That change proceeded very slowly. Everything during the first half of 
our period combined to delay it; the distraction of England by class-quarrels, 
religious quarrels, dynastic quarrels, her cultural isolation by the French war, 
the lowering of her morale by that selfish and disastrous undertaking. With the 
founding of the Tudor despotism and the establishment of printing, the confusion 
nominally ends; but it is long indeed before the bourgeoisie becomes able either 
to express itself or to make itself felt in national affairs. And in the absence 
of any fresh creative impulse, the earlier formulae continue to endure. Long 
after the introduction of printing, the expression of the people is still scarcely 
heard; the upperclass code, with its didactics, its allegories, its translations, its 
verbal stereotypes, persists. However broken the aristocratic public politically, 
their taste regulates literary production. 

Of this aristocratic literature, translation forms a large part. At the open- 
ing of the century John Trevisa, the protégé of Lord Berkeley, made for his pa- 
tron prose translations of Bartholomaeus De Proprietatibus Rerum, of Higden’s 
Polychronicon, and of delle Colonne’s De Regimine Principum. The Polychroni- 
con was printed by Caxton in 1482, emended by the editor-printer because of its 
“rude and old Englysshe, that is to wete certayn wordes which in these dayes 
be neither vsyd ne understanden.”’ The De Regimine was one of Hoccleve’s sources 
for his verse Regement of Princes, dedicated to Henry V while Prince of Wales; 
and another of his sources, the Secreta Secretorum, so widely popular in the 
Middle Ages, was turned into English prose by James Young for the Earl of 
Ormonde about 1420, and into verse by Lydgate and a pupil a generation later. 
It was about 1410 that John Walton made his stanzaic translation of Boethius’ 
De Consolatione at the command of Lord Berkeley’s daughter. Another didactic 
work, de Guilleville’s three-part Pilgrimage, was turned into English several times 
before 1500, one verse-rendering of its second part being by Lydgate to the Earl 


16 ENGLISH VERSE 


of Salisbury’s order. Much of Lydgate’s activity, indeed, was as translator. He 
went over into the romantic-epic field at the bidding of Henry V, with his Troy 
Book ; he may have pleasured himself with his Siege of Thebes, his Churl and Bird, 
his Dance Macabre; but his principal business was that of a large-scale didactic 
translator, from the saints’ lives done for Henry V and for Henry VI, for the 
Countess of March, for the Abbot of St. Albans, to his heaviest undertaking, 
the 36,000 lines of the Fall of Princes, executed for Humphrey of Gloucester. 

Didactics mingled with narrative we find in the saints’ legends of Bokenam, 
Bradshaw, Capgrave, in the Assembly of Gods, the Court of Sapience, the book 
of La Tour Landry printed by Caxton, and so on; and didactics were abundant 
unmixed, as in Cato, in Peter Idle’s Instructions to his son, in Ashby’s Activa 
Pollecia Principis, in Barclay’s Mirror of Good Manners, in the whole group of 
Regements and Secrees on the one hand, of books of nurture on the other. The 
purpose of Hawes and of Barclay, later, is equally tutorial. Skelton translated 
Diodorus Siculus, Barclay translated Sallust; but into his freer work each of 
these men brought an air of contemporary life which we do not find in Hawes. 
Far more is this the case with Skelton; and beyond him, outside the limits of 
“formal” verse, there appears a mass of loudmouthed roughly written satire and 
foolery in which he too has a hand, though keeping his hold on standard subjects. 
Between the two extremes, hybrid forms exist; a poem like “How a Lover 
Praiseth his Lady” attempts to use stereotyped material, but constantly betrays 
a freer tone and spirit. Interest in everyday and low-class character shows itself, 
although the lists of beggars and knaves and drunkards are as definitely lists as 
was the Fall of Princes; and as far back as Hoccleve and Bokenam, in our period, 
the individual was talking about himself at the same time that he was writing 
correct and lifeless matter for publication. But all along with the increase of 
bourgeois feeling and with the hybrids ran the persistent stereotype. The Temple 
of Glass, the Black Knight, the Flower and Leaf, the Assembly of Ladies, the 
Court of Love, the Isle of Ladies, La Belle Dame, the Cuckoo and Nightingale,— 
all court poems of the Chaucerian school, are except the last, of the standard court- 
narrative model, conforming to French tradition. Most of the court-lyric, such 
as the translations of Charles d’Orléans and the anonymous love-poems of Fairfax 
16, also follows copy. Features of interest, even of beauty, are presented by many 
of these poems; the grace of the Cuckoo and Nightingale or of the Lover’s Mass, 
and the superiority of verse-flow in the Orléans translations as compared e.g. 
with Lydgate’s work, are very marked. When the share of aristocratic writers 
in literary production increases, with the growing power of Humanism, the courtly 
lyric takes on new tones. But Wyatt and Surrey have already in their English 
blood a quality which they retain in the presence of the new material, and separate 
from it; they can most sweetly and clearly sing. 

. Neither in the narrative ballad nor in the form of pure song had lyric ever 
failed England. In the alehouse, the harvest field, the banqueting hall, the em- 
brasure where ladies plied their needles, there had always been the group of 
singers or the solo lutist. During the fifteenth century we become aware that 
the individual aristocrat is writing and singing his own poems, a custom derived 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 17 


perhaps from Provence and France. The Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Suffolk, 
later Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Earl of Surrey, Henry VIII himself, all try their 
hands at composition. And we recognize also the power of Church music in 
England, not only what the Latin hymns must have meant for the writing of 
English religious verse, but what choral music meant for the carols, for the 
quality of pure song. In the reigns of the Lancastrians the early music of 
England was in its bloom. Little or nothing remains of the earliest English 
musical compositon; but the fifteenth century saw the development of what is 
known as “the second English school”, of which the most eminent master was 
John of Dunstable. It was the first great age of counterpoint; in solo singers and 
in composers England outdistanced France and Flanders. Henry V, with his 
more military spirit, seems to have favored instrumental music; but Henry VI’s 
taste was for vocal, especially for religious song. His choir was famous, and 
compositions by the king himself are still extant. Martin le Franc, writing his 
Champion de Dames in 1436-44, describes the envy of Continental musicians as 
they listened to the English at the Court of Burgundy and despaired of rivalling 
such melodies. In 1442 the Privy Council! ordered Nicholas Sturgeon to “go 
and choose six singers of England such as the messenger that is come from the 
Emperor will desire for to go to the Emperor.” As far back as the beginning of 
the century, a Frenchman had celebrated the musicians of England,? and for gen- 
erations she held her power. 

But the beauty of song, whether on the lips of aristocrat, of cleric, or of the 
wandering harpist, is not paralleled in other fifteenth-century verse by a truly 
rhythmic sense. Words which the medieval Englishman linked to tune often seem 
to have been born in a tune; but the words which he employed to carry lesson 
or story, which he intended to reach the intellect, have frequently no kinship 
with rhythm. 

Of the many difficult problems in fifteenth-century verse criticism, the most 
persistent, are the method of analysis to be adopted and the determination of a 
text to be analyzed. The uncertainty which still surrounds the latter question 
renders inconclusive all the results which any method can at present yield. No 
satisfactory argument can be based on a text such as Professor Skeat offers for 
Chaucer; and should we turn instead to the Canterbury Tales material offered by 
the Chaucer Society, we have but eight, of the many MSS, from which to gen- 
-eralize. Of Chaucer’s minor poems we have indeed all the texts, but no estimate 
has yet been formed of the different scribal personalities and their modes of in- 
terference with a copy. For Lydgate and other fifteenth-century writers our 
position is far worse; we have in many cases only a single published text of 
each poem, giving us even less basis from which to argue. Every statement here 
made is therefore only a suggestion. 

Hitherto the method of analysis used on e.g. Lydgatian texts has been line- 
by-line. This method has perhaps some basis in the classical and the early Teu- 
tonic line-conception of verse, a conception which the establishment of rime has 


* Proceedings of the Privy Council, ed. Nicolas, v :218. 
* Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes 62:716-19. 


18 ENGLISH VERSE 


necessarily changed ; but a stronger reason is the coercive power of the couplet- 
idea so marked in English. The writer who uses complex stanzas made up of 
unequal lines may earn from the critic a treatment stanza-by-stanza; but the man 
who writes in equal lines is assumed to have thought and worked line-by-line. 
One reason for the long popularity of the closed couplet was its adaptation to 
the metrical grasp of the average Englishman. He could see rime and rhythm 
in its small compactness, while its usual content of wit and wisdom was within 
his comprehension, and just enough above his power of expression to com-— 
mand his admiration. There was no uncomfortable tax on his knowledge, no 
“threat of loveliness” to chill him. 

The line-by-line method will be used here only with limitations. Were it our 
sole mode of analysis, it would disguise the inadequacies of Chaucer’s followers 
by fencing their work and his into small spaces where his power of phrase- 
manoeuvre cannot be seen. The way in which he surpassed the couplet-form his 
disciples did not recognize, nor do we if we treat him solely by line-types. The 
short phrase following the long breath-sweep of two lines and more, the line 
with less than five heavy syllables followed by the line of extra weight, the 
compounding of a twenty-line paragraph out of a half-dozen different sorts of 
line-movement adroitly interwoven, the running-over of one rime followed by 
pause and emphasis on the next, and the story proceeding all the while with per- 
fect clarity and ease, its high points exactly met by the special stresses of the 
verse,—here is rooted the student’s delight in Chaucer’s line-management. Of 
course we seek in Chaucer nothing like the emotional contrasts of phrase-length 
as in Shelley. Shelley may write, in the Epipsychidion,— 





an antelope 

In the suspended impulse of its lightness 85 
Were less ethereally light; the brightness 

Of her divinest presence trembles through 

Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew 

Embodied in the windless heaven of June 

Amid the splendor-winged stars, the Moon 

Burns, inextinguishably beautiful. 


But although there is here, as in Chaucer, the long breath-run followed by a short 
phrase, although there is a light swift line such as Chaucer could on occasion 
write, there are things impossible to Chaucer,—the iteration of long i-sounds 
standing out of narrow vowels in the opening sentence, and the slow close of the 
passage on lingering polysyllables, after the isolated emphatic word Burns, This 
management of vowel-color and of tempo, like the choice of simile and of epithet 
and the exalted passion of the poet, are too sophisticated, too subtle for Chaucer. 
We can find alliteration in Chaucer, but no such subtlety as Keats’ 


The dreary melody of bedded reeds, (Endymion I, 239) 


with its long and short e’s and its half-submerged d’s. We can find skilful 
phrase-handling in Chaucer, but not such as Shelley’s. Nor do we expect it. 
Chaucer is a master of the larger speech-unit which his narrative key requires, 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 19 


and no man working in his key has ever done better. Indeed, his immediate 
successors failed most conspicuously in that particular. 

Lydgate is the striking example of this failure, just because Lydgate brought 
to a study of Chaucer the uneducated and timid mind moving line by line. He 
picked out from his master the kinds of line which might be written, and pro- 
ceeded to use them without any of Chaucer’s feeling for variety, for the pattern 
of the whole. He was by nature repetitive to excess, as his style shows, and the 
poverty of ideas which he joined to an unfortunate glibness resulted in an end- 
less and ill-organized stream of words whenever he was commanded to speak. 
The verse in which he arranges those words has no structural quality outside the 
line; it escapes analysis as a long series of huts connected by passages escapes 
being called architecture. We may apply to him the five types used by Professor 
Schick for the classification of his verses; but it must be with the proviso that 
such a treatment accords only with the mind of Lydgate, and in no wise with the 
mind of Chaucer, that it has no validity for real poetry. One of the many like- 
nesses between the fifteenth century and the eighteenth is the possibility of using 
on the verse of both periods the ruler five feet long. But for times of freer, 
larger feeling that ruler does not apply. 

It has been said above that Chaucer understood the shift of weight from 
line to line,—a phrase which must be made clearer before we can proceed. Eng- 
lish speech throws its major stresses upon the root-element of substantives, ad- 
jectives, and verbs; the iambic pentameter line has in theory five such stresses 
or heavy elements and five light or less important syllables, arranged alternately. 
In practice, an exact following of this pattern is not demanded; not only may 
the fall of verse-stress upon secondary syllables reduce the amount of grammatical 
stress in the line, and the appearance of important monosyllables in unaccented 
position change the balance of the line, but in all good verse this variation of the 
ripple, this shift of weight within the line, is sought by the artist. As Coventry 
Patmore says, the vital thing in English verse is “the perpetual conflict between 
the law of verse and the freedom of the language; each is incessantly though 
insignificantly violated for the purpose of giving effect to the other.” Or, as 
Charlton M. Lewis has said, “the actual movement of the verse does not exactly 
correspond with the ideal rhythmical scheme deep down in our minds; it plays 
about—but never wholly forsakes it.” An outward sign of a triumph of language 
over verse is the frequent appearance of a “‘trochee” among iambs, even of a 
spondee, or double heavy syllable, should the movement of thought require it; 
and this latter will make the line heavier just as the use of two syntactically un- 
important words to make up a foot will reduce the total weight of the line. 
When Chaucer writes 


But trewely to tellen atte laste, 


he has but three grammatically important syllables in a five-beat line; the verse 
is definitely underweighted ; and this underweighting is well adapted to the merely 
connective function of the line. 

Being a narrator by trade, Chaucer does not use the heavy line as often for 
a variant as he uses the light. The addition of stress to normal means, as we 


20 ENGLISH VERSE 


have noted, the presence in the text of pictorial or motor-words. The descrip-~ 
tive writer thus naturally makes more use of the full-weighted or the heavy line, 
while the forward-pressing narrator tends to reduce the stress-value of his total. 
Speaking a language in which the inflexional -e was still a separate element, 
Chaucer could conform his narrative to iambic rhythm, more simply than can 
the modern poet; and in a full-stressed line he moves with a lighter tread. He 
has, normally, a high percentage of regular iambic lines, about fifty per cent 
of his work in each case; and heavy lines are not common. Underweighted lines 
which he introduces into his pentameter are not necessarily those carrying a notion 
of speed, such as “Or breke it at a renning with his heed,” nor are they reduced 
in weight because of their small value in the narrative, like the line cited in our 
Jast paragraph above. They most often appear because there must be variety 
in any verse-flow, and because the lighter line is the natural variant for a story- 
teller. In this respect there is a noticeable difference between Chaucer and William 
Morris, for instance. Comparing two passages of similar function, the opening 
of the Squire’s Tale and the opening of the tale of Cupid and Psyche, from the 
Earthly Paradise, we shall find that Chaucer has thirty normal iambic lines to 
Morris’ eighteen, six heavy in one foot to Morris’ fourteen; and that while Morris 
has a dozen or so of verses showing interior balance or compensation, i.e. a 
heavy and a light foot in the same line, Chaucer seeks this variant not at all. 
The Victorian’s love of sense-appeal is reflected in his richer heavier rhythm. 
It may be objected that the two passages are not strictly parallel in content. But 
the characteristic difference between the two poets is that Chaucer opens a ro- 
mantic tale and sets his stage with fewer properties; Morris produces at once 
his color, his draperies, and his emotions. It is the nature of the two poets which 
differentiates their modes of beginning, both in imagery and in rhythm. 

Every poet of artistic sensibility steers a little east or west of regularity. 
A course in the direction of reduced line-weights gives a less obtrusive result ; 
free use of the heavier line, or of the line with marked rhythmic divergence, 
challenges attention. If the words thus made conspicuous are important words, 
the variant is justified. When Chaucer puts into the four-beat movement of the 
Book of the Duchesse the line 


Blew, bright, clere was the air, 


he writes a headless line, he places the adjective bright in unstressed position, 
and he uses two strong pauses to throw his descriptive epithets into prominence. 
Thus he heightens his effect both by rhythmic flow, by conflict of rhythm and 
language, and by marked catches in the breath-lengths. Nor does he dull the 
emphasis by using such an eccentric combination repeatedly or without purpose. 
Eccentric lines may diverge from normal either in the grouping of their 
stressed syllables or in the total number of their syllables. The former variant is 
briefly mentioned above; as regards the latter, lines may vary by excess or by 
deficiency. If by excess, the line may have disyllabic or “feminine” rime, it may 
have an extra syllable at the opening (disyllabic upbeat), and it may have an 
extra syllable before the verse-pause, or “epic caesura.’’ With these variants, the 
five-beat line may run to twelve syllables; the extra syllable elsewhere than at 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 21 


the line-opening (resolved arsis) is not proven for Chaucer. If the line varies 
not by excess but by deficiency of syllable, this happens either at the opening of 
the line or at the verse-pause, and results in either the “headless” or the “broken- 
backed” line. An unaccented syllable is lacking in such case. Students recognize 
the occurrence of the first of these line-forms in Chaucer, frequently in his 
four-beat work, less in his pentameter as time goes on. The headless line may 
occur in groups in the four-beat Hous of Fame, but the small number of such 
cases in the Canterbury Tales seem to serve a special purpose, to be used for 
cataloguing or for emphasis. As for the brokenbacked line, its sanction by 
Chaucer is still doubtful. 

The four-beat work of Chaucer and that of his contemporary Gower differ 
markedly as regards these variants in syllable-count. Gower does not write head- 
less lines. The ten per cent of them in the Hous of Fame, book 1, the approxi- 
mately fourteen per cent of them in book 11, have no parallel in the Confessio 
Amantis. Gower also represses the natural lightenings and reversals of freely 
flowing speech; and the amount of rhythmic variety in his long poem is so rela- 
tively small that an effect of monotony results, an effect which closely cor- 
responds to the mental tone of the Confessio. But Lydgate shows in his 
work far more headless lines than Chaucer permitted in his pentameter; and 
he adds to his large number of lines short at their beginning an equal and some- 
times larger number of lines short an unaccented syllable at the verse-pause,— 
brokenbacked. For example :— 


And mony a tre,mo then I can telle Black Knight 81 
Theffect of which,was as ye shal here ibid. 217 


As his basis of full pentameter lines is frequently below the fifty per cent usual 
in Chaucer, Lydgate has, instead of Gower’s excess of normal over variant, an 
excess of variant over normal. And while Gower’s substance and style are con- 
firmed by his rhythm, Lydgate’s are in discord with it; they have none of the 
qualities which can justify such persistent emphasis. Now, if the thing said does 
not warrant the use of forceful variants, if the attention is summoned sharply 
to words not worth special emphasis, the effect on the listener is irritating. Lyd- 
gate’s heavy demands on the rhythmic ear are not justified by his matter. These 
divergences, these headless and brokenbacked lines, also occur repeatedly and 
in close proximity, so that the reader has the threefold tax of an emphatic variant 
unsupported by a content deserving emphasis, and aggressively recurrent. The 
mechanical excess and the aesthetic or intellectual deficiency in Lydgate’s verse 
so react upon one another that the result is more than doubly displeasing. 
Beside Lydgate, Hoccleve leads the list of English Chaucerians. The person- 
ality of this partly pious, partly dissipated government clerk, who knew Chaucer 
and felt real affection for his master, this writer of begging-letters, railer at 
himself, translator, miracle-monger, wouldbe scamp, and wooden versifier, is far 
more interesting than that of Lydgate. The amount of Hoccleve’s work is small 
as compared with that of Lydgate, and it includes no such proportion of com- 
missioned verse. Alongside the decorous hack-translation of the De Regimine 


be ENGLISH VERSE 


Principum done for Henry V, alongside a number of religious poems and a 
righteously indignant tongue-lashing of the heretic Oldcastle, are not a few 
compositions definitely autobiographical. Hoccleve’s work is all stanzaic, in penta- 
meter, and quite different as regards line-management from that of Lydgate. 
Here, as with Lydgate, there is uncertainty about the text; but so far as we can 
now see, Hoccleve writes very few of the lines scanted half a foot which are so 
common in Lydgate. His metrical characteristic is, that while holding steadily 
to the full ten syllables, he is not sensitive to the correspondence of syllables 
with verse-stress. He can write :— 


And with him hir seruant to the ship wente,— 


and many another such line syllable-filled and rhythm-empty. He and Lydgate 
had each a code; but while Lydgate erects Chaucer’s variants into types and 
over-uses them, Hoccleve watches the number of his syllables and hears no 
rhythm. As Hoccleve’s EETS editor points out, he “thwarts the run of his 
verse” at every turn by the prosaic arrangement of his syllables. Lydgate, on the 
other hand, is quite willing to write lines of less than ten syllables; but having 
adopted such variant-forms, his repetitive tendency overworks them to the injury 
of his whole. 

The tendencies of later pentameter-writers in the century were determined 
neither by Hoccleve nor by Lydgate. Even men showing Lydgate’s influence, 
like Metham, or Hawes or Cavendish in the sixteenth century, do not imitate his 
shortbreathed line-movement; and no one has a syllable-counting tendency. In 
most later cases there is no visible code on which verse is constructed. Perhaps 
because of the bewilderment caused by the loss of inflexional -e in pronunciation 
while it was still irregularly written, perhaps because of the cramping and inbreed- 
ing which weakened the intellectual fibre of the educated further with every dec- 
ade, the rhythmic sense of most English writers slid to the level of doggerel. 
In the Libel of English Policy, an earnest plea to government for “high tariff,” 
in the versified handbook of alchemy by George Ripley, in the romances of Love- 
lich, the awkward syllable-counting of Hoccleve and the awkward over-use of 
emphatic line-forms by Lydgate change to a reaching-after the rime-word without 
regard to the number or the placing of syllables in the line. This is doggerel; it 
becomes in the Libel a mere slither of words; and though there is less of a 
collapse of rhythm in Lovelich and in Hawes, their matter is so invertebrate 
that it disturbs the reader more than do the Libel’s purposeful, if clumsy lines. 

The codeless weakness of such degeneracy and the obstinately uncomprehend- 
ing codes of Lydgate and Hoccleve are the more marked because of a few 
striking examples of rhythmic sensitiveness. Conspicuous among these is the 
translation of Palladius’ De re rustica executed for Humphrey of Gloucester by 
an unnamed protégé at much the same time when Lydgate was beginning his Fall 
of Princes translation for the duke. I have elsewhere! commented on the re- 
markable smoothness and accuracy of the existing texts of this translation, and 
pointed out that in its first 1800 lines there are no cases of clipped lines, almost 


*Modern Philology XXIII, 148. 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION ' 23 


no error in the scribe’s treatment of inflexional -e, and every sign of a competent 
user of language and rhythm. The matter of the poem is unpoetical enough, 
with its instructions as to bee-keeping, poultry-management, the choice of soils, 
the times of planting, etc.; but there is no monotony and no clumsiness in the 
handling of the verse. The prologue and the connectives between books have 
much about Gloucester, and display adroit manipulation of rhetorical devices, as 
the passages included in this anthology will show. And there is clever workman- 
ship in the stanza-variations of the Lover’s Mass. When these pieces of work 
were done, and when the anonymous translations of Charles d’Orléans were 
executed, or earlier in the Boethius of Walton, some men were still sensitive to 
. the relation between language and verse. But throughout the period, the incompe- 
tents are in the majority ; and the further we go from Chaucer the feebler the gen- 
eral sense of rhythm. The incapacity of Hawes, the stiffness of Barclay, the mix- 
ture of lowclass slapstick and upperclass stereotype in Skelton, give place to the 
doggerel of Morley, the puerility of Nevill, and the curious double movement of 
Wyatt and of Surrey. Neither of these first masters of the sonnet walks very 
securely in the long line. Wyatt is much given to the wrenching of accent for 
rhythm’s sake, a preciosity we can see in Walter’s Guiscard and Sigismonda be- 
fore him and in Swinburne or Rossetti after him; and Surrey’s blank verse is 
tentative. But both they and Skelton can sing with perfect ease and sweetness. 
When they sing, they turn from older and from newer formal] line-groupings 
and from pentameter, to shorter verses not equal in length; they find their full 
release by a variant other than the rhythmic, as the writer of the Lover’s Mass 
had found it. 

But generally throughout the Transition the stereotype of form is as heavy 
as is that of style and subject. It was de rigueur to write pentameter, and espe- 
cially to write it in rime royal. The amount of seven-line stanza in the period 
is enormous, from Walton’s translation of Boethius (part only) through Lyd- 
gate’s Fall of Princes and Ripley’s Compend of Alchemy to Hawes’ Pastime of 
Pleasure and to Cavendish and Sackville. The romances had their own inherited 
strophes; but the religious, the didactic, and the occasional verse of the Transi- 
tion preferred the seven-line stanza. The couplet, either four-beat or five-beat, 
was not apparently favored even by Chaucer’s immediate followers to any 
such extent as was rime royal. How far this preference was the poets’ own is 
uncertain. For although the great bulk of the Fall of Princes, the almost 6,000 
lines of the Life of Our Lady, and the 3,700 lines of St. Edmund, raise the 
count of Lydgate’s seven-line stanzas high over that of his eights, these are com- 
missioned works, the Fall of Princes and the Palladius-translation both done to 
Gloucester’s order at the same time in the same strophe-form. And Lydgate’s 
eight-line stanza, constructed as a double quatrain, carries a large number of 
short poems, often religious, which may have been put into that form by his 
own choice. Hoccleve also uses the eight-line (and nine-line) stanza in his oc- 
casional poems, where he speaks more independently than in the Regement of 
Princes or in his narrative verse. But the later writers of the century preferred 
rime royal. Perhaps the taste of earlier patrons, imposed on the translations 


24 ENGLISH VERSE 


which they ordered, took effect on subsequent versifiers; certainly both Cavendish 
and Sackville had the Fall of Princes in mind when writing their seven-line 
stanzas. 

Occasionally there is variation of form within the one work. Lydgate’s 
Temple of Glass uses five-beat couplets and stanzas; Hawes changes from rime 
royal to couplet when he introduces the Godfrey Gobelive episodes into his Pas- 
time; Barclay’s insertion of a stanzaic Complaint into his pentameter-couplet 
Fourth Eclogue doubtless seemed to him very effective. But the narrow range 
of this variation, as compared with Chaucer in the Anelida, or with the Lover’s 
Mass, or with Skelton in his Garland of Laurel, shows the timidity of the English 
Transition code. When the Humanistic change came it came at first in form 
more than in subject or in style; the sonnet and blank verse are more definitely 
novelties in form than was Barclay’s introduction of the eclogue, and were ad- 
dressed to a public more in need of new verse-moulds than was the public which 
enjoyed Skelton’s tumbling verse. A road having been broken in one direction, 
the bourgeois subjects which were struggling into notice could push further for- 
ward. Sometimes they stumbled in the couplet, sometimes in the stanza, as 
either the political doggerel against Suffolk or the Hye Way to the Spyttelhous 
may show. And the disappearance of fourteenth-century stanzas derived from 
jongleur or from Latin hymns, of the complexities of strophe as in the Miracle 
Plays, is as marked as is the sixteenth-century appearance of humanistic forms 
and development of song. 

Outside the stanza and couplet there is little verse-form in the Transition 
upon which to comment. Skeat assigns the partly terza rima Complaint to his 
Lady to Chaucer ; the Anelida contains a rhetorical exercise in medial rime and in 
echo which we find again in the Lover’s Mass and in Palladius; Skelton plays 
with short lines; and there are a few roundels in the period, from that at the 
close of the Parlement of Foules to those translated from Orléans. Some 
undated manuscripts contain free lyric verse which, if of the mid-sixteenth cen- 
tury, arrives when expected, and if of the fifteenth, is still more interesting. The 
Cambridge University codex Ff i, 6 is such a volume. But in general, there is 
less variety of verse-form, as of verse-tone, in the English post-Chaucerian period 
than in the Scottish. 

The difference in social growth between England and Scotland in the fif- 
teenth century may in part account for the fact that Chaucer’s Scottish followers 
do not by any means suffer the rhythmic and intellectual disorder so marked 
in the Southern writers. English Chaucerians did over again, and botched, a 
work already done to admiration; but the master’s influence was really felt by 
Scotsmen. When the spirit of Scottish nationality asserted itself, in the four- 
teenth century, the Bruce of John Barbour gave it enthusiastic expression, and 
the tide of national poetry began to rise. It continued throughout the fifteenth 
century, in the popular ballads and in the popular epic of Blind Harry’s Wallace. 
Alongside this stream of genuine national expression, borne on the same tide of 
rising vitality, runs the more intellectual and formal poetry of King James the 
First, of Robert Henryson, of William Dunbar, and of Gavin Douglas, to alJ 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 25 


of whom, except perhaps to Dunbar, Chaucer is master and model. This more 
lettered aspect of the Scottish florescence shows itself first in King James (died 
1437), and then in Henryson, the “Schoolmaster of Dunfermline,” who died 
about 1506. In them and in Dunbar, who died in 1520, we find, looking at the 
technical side alone, a control of line and of stanza, a definiteness of purpose, 
and an assured ease of movement, which neither Lydgate nor Hoccleve ever at- 
tained. King James’s one poem, the Kingis Quair, is somewhat hampered by its 
allegorical machinery, but James, like Henryson, has his verse under control. 
Henryson, though claiming for his Fables a “morale sweit sentence” which 
he considers it the duty of the poet to provide, keeps his moral from encroach- 
ing on his narrative,—a restraint impossible to Lydgate; and in his Testament of 
Cresseid he goes far from the shrewd and simple humor of the Fables to strike 
a note of passionate pity loftier than anything written by his more versatile and 
vigorous compatriot Dunbar, whom criticism generally terms the greatest of the 
group. Dunbar, rich in a begging friar’s experience of life, is a professional 
poet of the stock of Skelton and the tribe of Rabelais. He tried his hand at 
many meters and managed all easily; he can praise the Virgin, abuse his fel- 
lowpoets, lash the vices of the time, and shudder at death, with equal fluency 
and force. And in quieter moods he can sound a note of solemn dignity in the 
Lament for the Makaris, and write the neat allegorical compliment of the Thrissill 
and the Rois. But his widemouthed boisterous vigor, the graceful sentiment of 
King James, and the quiet amused penetration of Henryson, all take something 
of their form and pressure from Chaucer; and all these poets are competent 
workmen. 

Gavin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld (died ca.1522), is a different personality. 
If Dunbar is akin to Skelton, Douglas is akin to Lydgate and to Hawes, though 
a much larger man than they. Certain of the conventions obeyed by them he 
has; his Palice of Honour is as heavily allegorical as the Court of Sapience or 
the Flower and Leaf; and in much of his work there is a straining for “‘aureat 
language” which, as in Hawes, speaks the rhetorician rather than the poet. This 
connects Douglas with such Frenchmen as St. Gelais and Molinet; indeed, his 
likeness to Octovien de St. Gelais, also bishop, rhetorician, and translator of Virgil, 
is marked. But wholly a pedant Douglas was not. The interesting escapes of 
personal expression and of nature-feeling in his prologues to the Aeneid, and 
his harsh but not systematically harsh treatment of the five-beat line, give him 
advantage over Lydgate, even over the nature-bits of the Troy Book. According 
to Professor Saintsbury, Douglas makes some use of the brokenbacked line; but 
until the relation of his verse to St. Gelais’ Aeneid-translation, made in French 
pentameter couplet, can be worked out, there can be no full discussion of the 
technique of Douglas. 

Verse-modeling and style develop parallel in all these writers. With the 
establishment of rime in late Latin and in the West European languages, the 
medieval system of “colores rhetorici” received additional floriations. To the 
accepted modes of literary amplification, to the “digressio,” “descriptio,” and “ex- 
clamatio” which we see used e.g. in Chaucer’s more academic narratives, to the 
management of interpretation, of comparisons, and of word-play, there were added 


26 ENGLISH VERSE 


the effects obtainable by rime-combination. All varieties of stanza, all possi- 
bilities of medial rime, echo, interlace, etc., were worked by the French poet- 
rhetoricians, but were less favored in England. There the feeling for rime as a 
mode of stress might lead to its over-use by restless-minded men, but with the 
more sluggish-minded it led to the phrase-tag. The difference in its handling 
marks the difference between Skelton and Lydgate, just as its use now for empha- 
sis, now in formula, now partially blurred by enjambement, marks the Chaucerian 
control of technique. A study of rime in Chaucer or in Lydgate is scarcely begun 
when its purity or impurity has been noted; the subjugation of rime to poetic 
purpose is the root of the matter, with its various aspects of phrase lengthened over 
the rime, phrase-formula used for rime’s sake, shift of emphasis from rime-word 
to mid-line and back, etc. The second of these subjects, so far as Chaucer and 
Lygate are concerned, is discussed in the introductory essay on Lydgate here; but 
the two other aspects mentioned require far more comment than this book can give. 

So with the question of vocabulary and word-usage in the Transition; the 
rigor mortis which held rhythm and held narrative-power pressed heavily on the 
treatment of the word. Something of this may be ascribed to the great amount 
of commanded translation in the period; but in passing the responsibility from 
poet to patron we do not remove it from the group. The late medieval versifier 
or reader had no notion of the metaphors latent but vital in words, of the power 
resident in the “fringe” of a verb or adjective and evocable by slightly shifting 
the angle of vision. There is a strong etymological interest in words, and 
there is abundance of abstract terminology new in English; but there is little 
or no development in meaning. Chaucer’s “smoky rain,’ Lydgate’s “restless 
stone” of Sisyphus, are rarities in Early English. Although Chaucer’s senses 
were far more alert, his perceptual power far higher than those of his English 
followers, he is no specialist in word or phrase. The characteristic action which 
he sees so truly he presents in lines or in brief scenes. Concentration is not a 
quality of the Middle Ages. And as the Middle Ages yielded to the impact of 
Humanism, two general tendencies become marked in the use of words by 
English writers. There is the riotous extravagance of Skelton, in whose texts 
we find the inexplicable word as well as the inexplicable local allusion; such a 
word is obviously either a bit of showman’s lingo or a boisterous coinage on 
Skelton’s part. In Hawes and Nevill is the other tendency. Their pedantry 
strives for “aureat language’; Hawes loads his verse with terms like depure, 
facundious, solacious, oblocucioun, pulchritude, etc.; but both he and Nevill 
also use words, especially verbs, so vaguely and insecurely that we find no mean- 
ing in them.1. We often do not know what Hawes intends to say by his use of 
exemplify or inspect or ratify; and his failure to pass on meaning is doubtless 
due to his own vagueness on the point. St. Gelais and the later rhétoriqueurs 
in France, Lyly or the seventeenth-century Latinists in England, show the same 
tendency, which is less a matter of chronology than of social and educational 
maladjustments. This attitude to language Hawes does not derive from his 
“master Lydgate”; Lydgate muddles his syntax badly, and employs the dead 


See note on the Pastime of Pleasure, line 78. 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION Ze 


phrase for rime, but he rarely wanders from the essential meaning of a Latin 
word. His very large contribution to the English vocabulary? does not deepen 
or intensify language; it has no procreative power. He does not even carry it 
easily, as Hoccleve had carried his limited human common-sense vocabulary ; but 
he does provide English with a mass of useful abstract terms which he manages 
with accuracy, but which the pedants of the later Transition blurred. 

Chaucer attained his rhythmical and critical poise in an imperfectly devel- 
oped and ill-adjusted age. He could not bequeath it. The power to control 
material can be received only by those mentally capable of receiving it; and the 
resettlement of the stereotype on English society just after his death, the increas- 
ing lack of educational opportunity of the early fifteenth century in England, 
smothered the growth of any such mentality. Pattern can be a relentless thing; 
if it encroaches on the imaginative field, the imagination either submits, or escapes 
only to extravagance and disordered unsymmetry. Not merely in Transitional 
rhythmic work and Transitional use of the formula or of the rhetorical code, does 
this appear, but in Transitional narrative. 

At the opening of the fifteenth century the English narrator had before him 
as narrative-types the fabliau, the saint’s legend, the allegory, and the romance. 
The first was frankly bourgeois, as the second was religious; both were small- 
scale. Allegory and romance are oftenest large-scale narratives, and the former 
has at its best a sense of causality working in human affairs which makes it 
an important factor in the development of structural feeling. Both it and the 
romance are also of moment in narrative-shaping because of their mass, because 
the mere handling of a great quantity of material urges a workman towards 
structure. 

For several of these story-forms the work of Chaucer offered examples. 
He had brought the fabliau, especially, to a high state of finish as regards econ- 
omy, dexterity, and single-figure portrayal; but in the eyes of his followers such 
tales were permissible only because their tellers were at the moment specially 
privileged; the presentation of such material would not only be impossible to 
the hand of Hoccleve or of Lydgate, but to their code. The “tragedy,” as in the 
Monk’s tale, or the saint’s legend, as in those of Prioress and Second Nun, 
seemed, however, a very fit subject to the Transition workman, who probably saw 
no difference in the sincerity of Chaucer’s attitude to the one and the other. 

The saint’s legend ran out, as a productive vein, by the close of the fifteenth 
century. It was hampered by its religious character. Its protagonist possessed 
no human failings, and the various antagonists no redeeming features; the two 
great opportunities of narrative, the dilemma and the error, were rarely permitted 
in the legend. Suspense, except in an elementary repetitive form, and complica- 
tion, are absent. Visualization is infrequent; the stage is rarely set; and dia- 
logue, used mainly for conversion or for miracle-working, shows no conflict of 
motive within the individual. Capgrave’s St. Katherine endeavors to explain 
action and prepare for event; and in the lengthy discourses of the princess and 
her ministers regarding her marriage there is evident the author’s sober legal 


* See the Introd. to Lydgate, pp. 87 ff. below. 


28 ENGLISH VERSE 


pleasure in weighing and stating a case. There is spirit in the speeches with which 
the proposals of the steward are rejected, in Bradshaw’s St. Werburge; but 
generally the legends lack the mundane vigor of utterance which had been pres- 
ent in the miracle-plays, and are lacking also in the dignity and the pathos which 
their circumstances permit. Nor does management of detail show a strong 
hand. Capgrave sometimes notes facial expression, or uses a fortunate homely 
simile; and in Bokenam there is another kind of leaning towards actuality in the 
author’s frank and even playful comment. But in the most prolific of all the 
legend-writers of the period, John Lydgate, the personal or pictorial is at the 
minimum, and the weak repetitive method is burdened by masses of didactic di- 
gression in which the narrative current almost disappears. Fifteenth-century 
legend-writers brought narrative no nearer to the object of study. So far as 
plot was concerned, the workmen striving after magnitude sought it on the 
method of piling like details atop of one another; the notion of bringing the 
figure closer to the eye, instead of increasing the size of the canvas, is outside 
the comprehension of most medieval narrators. Was a narrative to be more im- 
pressive or more heroic, it had more tortures or more combats added to it. But 
still more did the failure of the legend to quicken human feeling inhere in the 
rigidity of its conception of human character. Its attempt to raise the pitch of 
life was unsuccessful, while that of romance succeeded, because of its tenuous 
contact with reality; its structure was often feebly repetitive; and the greatest 
study in life, personality, could receive no furtherance from its refusal to see 
aught but white and black. 

The two great dangers of English literary expression, formlessness and 
didacticism, were thus encouraged by legend-writing; and they were not com- 
bated by another medieval narrative type, the allegory. Allegory resembles the 
legend, and differs from fabliau and romance, in the rigidity of its material and 
in its attempt to instruct. There is little or nothing in allegory of the amused 
bourgeois temper which appears in the fable or the fabliau, and rarely an interest 
in humanity. Some advance there is over the saints’ legends in the larger plan 
and in the insistence upon causality; to this extent the hand of narrative is 
strengthened, although clumsily and impersonally. The type is Eastern in its 
origin and Christian in its development; in Christian literatures it is a hybrid 
between the narrative and the homily. It became weak or restricted in the Tran- 
sition; and we may query if this were not in a measure due to the new method 
of treating the Biblical text, if the new exegesis did not affect the popularity of 
the method. The necessity for an interpretation of Biblical language other than 
the literal or surface had been maintained especially by the great Church father 
Origen, followed by the greater St. Augustine in the fourth century. Such 
Biblical exegesis, starting from belief in verbal inspiration and determined to 
press the obstinate letter into harmony with Christian desire, dominated the 
Middle Ages, and its method extended to creative narrative. It felt in the word 
or in the narrative not those connotations for senses and for memory, not those 
recognitions of human experience, which had been pagan and which were over- 
borne by the Christian Church, but a set of moral and ethical precepts. The en- 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 29 


cyclopedists, like Isidor or Fulgentius, give allegoric etymologies for terms and 
names; the treatment of pagan poets such as Virgil, Ovid, and Homer, is one 
of the curiosities of criticism; and the impulse goes over also into the creative 
field. Churchmen like Alanus de Insulis and Martianus Capella composed ex- 
tensive allegorical narrative, peopled by personified abstractions; Dante himself 
lives in spite of, not because of, the method with which he is saturated; Petrarch, 
and even the bourgeois Boccaccio, viewed poetry, with Dante, as “concealing truth 
under the beauteous veil of the fable.’ Lydgate and Hawes accept this as the 
function of poetry; for them fable, or story, is a “covert” for truth, is a “cloak- 
ing colour.” 

Hawes, however, implies, and later writers confirm, a growing indifference 
to allegorical narrative on the part of the uncultivated public. He himself, in 
his Pastime of Pleasure, mixes his allegory with romantic combat and amour, 
with pseudo-learning, and with the farcical episode of Godfrey Gobelive,—per- 
haps to assure himself of a hearing with his royal patrons. In the bourgeois 
public, with its taste for the actual, loss of popularity for the allegory was 
bound to come; while from the best-educated, for another reason, there also 
came a limiting of the scope of allegory. The Augustinian doctrine of verbal 
inspiration, with its consequent desire to wrench and press the word, yielded, 
so far as the strongest minds were concerned, to the doctrine of historic inter- 
pretation held by St. Jerome, and championed in the early days of Humanism by 
Tyndale, by Colet, and by Erasmus. 

Nevertheless, the tendency to personification, the interest in a double mean- 
ing or a concealment, were not eradicated by the Renaissance. Under disguise 
of chevalier or of censor the allegorical method persisted; Ariosto, Tasso, 
Spenser, use the one cloak, Skelton, Dryden, Swift, the other. Pure didactic 
allegory had its last great treatment in Bunyan and in Comus, but the method is 
not dead, nor will it die. As Lipprhann has said, the will to find an implied 
meaning beneath an obvious is “the deepest of all stereotypes.” Our class- 
shift today has brought not only popular interest in riddle and puzzle, but in 
Shaw, in Barrie, in Capek. And although we have nominally accepted the 
“higher criticism,’ in thousands of pulpits the method of allegory lives on 
defiant. 

Rigid itself, allegory links readily with those devices for expression which 
are rigid. The largest form in which it moves is the Pilgrimage or Quest; 
smaller and more static forms are the Procession or ‘“Defile,” and the Parlia- 
ment. The Nuptials and Battles of the more pompous Latin were never popu- 
lar in France or in England, although the “estrif,” as a sort of midway-type be- 
tween the contest and the Parliament, was favored in legally-minded France 
and Provence. The Pilgrimage-motive probably owed some of its popularity to 
its connection with reality, with that religious or chivalric taking of the road 
which meant so much to the medieval mind, and which, as a traveling toward 
the unknown, will always have fascination for humanity. These two could be 
forced into combination, as in the Anticlaudianus of Alanus, in Chaucer’s Hous 
of Fame, in Christine de Pisan’s Chemin de long Estude. And there was in 


30 ENGLISH VERSE 


them some chance for character-interplay, for episode, which the Procession 
had not. The mere line of figures “passing a given point,” and all guided by a 
common feeling, as in Boccaccio’s De Casibus or the Dance Macabre or the Ship 
of Fools, meets allegory only in so far as it uses personification, like Petrarch’s 
Trionfi. It was such a list, when real persons were summoned, as by Cavendish 
or by Sackville, that contributed solid material to the Tudor drama; and from 
a list of actual people, be it of Chaucer’s Prologue, or of the Ship of Fools, or 
of the seventeenth-century “characters,” or of Henley’s Hospital Sketches, or 
of the Spoon River Anthology, interest never dies out. 

It was this intrusion of the real person, whether coming from past history 
or from contemporary life, into narrative, which most surely undermined the 
credit of Personification, as applied to abstractions or to qualities. After a 
long period of attempt to modify life, men began more correctly to report it; 
and any increase of human perception is in the line of human development. 
Conduct in narrative began to be determined not by precept but by human prob- 
ability or by recorded fact; that is, it underwent just the same change that had 
been made in Biblical interpretation. The Tudor dramatic narrative, when 
tragic, insisted on that Causality which allegory had helped it to realize; and it 
attempted something which neither fabliau nor satire ever had, but which alle- 
gory and romance consciously sought,—a raising of the pitch of life. 

Such a raising of life above the everyday was theoretically the business of 
romance as well as of allegory; but many romances, both English and French, 
are nearly as conventional in their central figures as if they were allegories. The 
hero is really Courage or Loyalty or Love, whatever his appellation. It is the 
event which is “romantic,” the succession of ordeals to which the hero is sub- 
jected. In the degenerate romances the canvas is overloaded with such ordeals, 
with perils, deceptions, combats, even as the saint’s legend was overloaded with 
tortures or miracles. In both, the repetitive method, the lack of purpose and of 
humanity, drive the type to exhaustion. But to this summary generalization 
there are three great West European exceptions,—Chrétien de Troyes in the 
twelfth century, Jean de Meun in the thirteenth, and Sir Thomas Malory in 
the late fifteenth century. 

The work of de Meun, despite its allegorical disguise and romantic plan, 
belongs rather among satires than among romances; this was clearly perceived 
by Christine de Pisan and her group, and by an indignant Church. Chaucer rec- 
ognized his intellectual kinsman, and was as well able as de Meun to use the 
double method, as well able as the Cock of his own Nun’s Priest. But the fif- 
teenth and early sixteenth centuries knew little or nothing of innuendo in satire; 
they used not the rapier but the bludgeon for criticism. The popularity of de 
Meun waned as the popularity of romantic allegory waned, not because of impa- 
tience with de Meun’s real intention, but because men failed to see that inten- 
tion through the outmoded stereotype. 

Chrétien and Malory approach romantic material very differently from de 
Meun, and each possesses a characteristic not usually displayed in the romance- 
type. Malory has to a remarkable extent that sense of causality working in 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 31 


human experience which is to appear more powerfully in Shakespearian tragedy. 
And Chrétien, while handling romantic material, does it on occasion in a spirit 
as bourgeois as Chaucer’s own, with as shrewdly amused a sense of human 
pre’ences and inconsistencies. Neither of these great qualities, the bourgeois 
understanding of average human nature or the tragic sense of the ills of life 
as self-caused, was possessed by the fifteenth century generally; but in Chaucer’s 
age the former was there in full and the latter in an undeveloped form. Both, 
for instance, are in Boccaccio, in his Decameron and in his De Casibus. 

Knowledge of Chrétien on Chaucer’s part has not been demonstrated; but 
no student of literature can read the dialogues between Troilus and Pandarus 
without turning again to Chrétien’s Yvain and pondering the conversations be- 
tween the hesitating widow and her sprightly maid. Nor can a student refrain 
from drawing the spiritual comparison, whether contact between the two writers 
be proved or not. For if a nation’s political and social conditions are of any 
effect upon her writers, then similarities in those respects between two Occidental 
countries may produce similar results without direct borrowing. Let a narrative 
outline come into the hands of two keen observers of human nature, each living 
in a period of strong political vitality, of rising bourgeois aspirations, and of 
a more clearly personal view of woman than heretofore, and those writers’ 
handling of a human situation may well be similar. Chaucer may not have 
known the Decameron, he may not have read Chrétien; but he lived in a fer- 
ment of social conditions very like that around the Italian and the Frenchman, 
and towards that ferment his attitude was, as theirs, the ironic smile of the 
observer. 

The mass of English romances is of the fourteenth century. Much of it 
came from France by translation, and to the student of narrative the handling 
of the French original by the English workman is especially interesting. The 
principal romances of the late Middle*Ages which allow us to compare the ex- 
isting French with the existing English are Partonopeus de Blois, William of 
Palerne, the Launfal stories, Li Biaus Desconus, and Chrétien de Troyes’ 
Yvain—in English as Ywain and Gawain. The treatment of these stories by 
English translators varies from William of Palerne, which is a free paraphrase, 
to a somewhat close rendering as in Partonope of Blois. Of course, any 
medieval adapter felt himself at liberty to expand or alter plot; it is the English 
treatment of character, of background, which particularly interests us. 

It often happens, in the better romances, that real traits of character ap- 
pear. The romance is not so rigid as the saint’s legend; its protagonist may 
make mistakes, and may even be depicted in a ridiculous situation, as in Par- 
tonope of Blois and in Li Biaus Desconus. The background was often ample, 
and with many moving figures; though the effect might be that of the shallow 
crowding of tapestry, though ‘“‘as in a faded tapestry, the brilliance of the dresses 
might outlast the flesh-color,” yet the eye of the romancer could and did move 
frcm one focus to another. 

The romance had a freer hand than the legend to develop not only character 
but structure ; its manoeuvring-ground was larger than that of the fable or fabliau, 


32 ENGLISH VERSE 


giving room not only for the delineation of character by dialogue but for antici- 
pation, surprise, suspense, retard, for the management of transition. Chaucer’s 
strength had lain in the single scene, the Friar entering the cottage of the sick 
churl, the conversation between the Cock and the Fox; and in some of the ro- 
mances we can find larger-scale character-management. In Chrétien’s Yvain, for 
example, the hero is concealed by a pitying waiting-maid in the castle of a seigneur 
whom he has pursued and slain on the castle’s threshold, only to be trapped by the 
fall of the portcullis behind him. From an upper window Yvain watches the 
obsequies of the seigneur, and falls deeply in love with the widow. He must and 
will wed her ; and the waiting woman sets about the task of persuading her mistress. 
The scenes in which this is accomplished, the picture of the widow’s abating 
anger and growing coquetry, and of the embarrassed first meeting of the two 
lovers, are of extraordinary interest to students of narrative. This transfer of 
interest from the physical combat or the intellectual disputation to the conflict of 
human emotions is Chrétien’s principal service to storytelling. He is not alone 
in his occupation with it; many biblical narratives and much of Ovid before him, 
Boccaccio’s Filostrato and the sonnets of Petrarch after him, focussed attention 
upon the ebb and flow of feeling. But where Chrétien, like Boccaccio, excelled, 
was in his sense of time, his recognition of the need to make the change of emo- 
tional front gradual, of avoiding the leap from one narrative position to another. 
Both he and Renaud, the author of Li Biaus Desconus, were aware of the effec- 
tiveness of hesitation. Renaud represents his hero as sitting on the side of his 
bed and debating whether or not he shall go to his lady’s room; he says :— 


Trai-je, ou ci remanrai? 

Ma dame le m’a desfendu, 
Et par sanblant ai je veu 
Ele veut bien que je i aille. 


At last he ventures. But the lady is a fairy, and as he is about to cross her thresh- 
old, a spell falls on him; he finds himself hanging in the air over a raging torrent. 
He shouts for help; but when the servants rush in with torches, the torrent dis- 
appears, and he seems the victim of a nightmare, to his great chagrin. Were this 
magical episode presented without the hero’s musing, we should treat it as mere 
fantasy ; but the stamp of reality is given it by the preceding very human hesitation 
and by the comedy-discovery. One of the few noteworthy structural or psycho- 
logical moments in Lydgate’s mass of narrative, we may note, is the study, in 
the Fall of Princes i: 4943 ff., of Althea’s hesitation over the fatal brand. Here 
the monk turns aside from his usual source, where the matter is dealt with in one 
sentence, to follow Ovid’s study of the mother’s contending feelings; and inade- 
quate though the English be, the choice of technique is a point in Lydgate’s favor. 

Another noteworthy feature of the better romances is the attention to ad- 
ministrative (say) as well as to psychological transition. In the two French ro- 
mances just mentioned there is obvious care in the fitting of joints. And in 
Eger and Grine, an English story of which no French parallel is known, the 
knight Grine passes a lady’s castle on his way to avenge his comrade Eger; she 
implores him to abandon the adventure, but he is obdurate and goes on. On his 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 33 


return, successful, he knocks on the door of the room where the lady is sitting 
in anxiety for him; and her waitingwoman, opening it cries out, ‘““O madam, now 
is come that knight That went hence when the day was bright.” The inferior 
romances would have jumped this detail, would have seen the story intermittently, 
would have recorded merely that the knight returned and that the lady was re- 
joiced. It is in this spacing-out and continued visualization of story between 
major events that mastery of structure is most needed. A lyrical or emotional 
writer may depict situation with power, but the great narrative writer must possess 
also the ability to get from situation to situation without loss of power. Immature 
or degenerate narrative betrays its weakness in lack of transitional management 
quite as much as in failure at the emotional nodus. Even in a man so close to 
Shakespeare as was Marlowe the difficulty of making transitions is evident; the 
poet who wrote the death-scene of Edward II wrote also the clumsy shift of the 
king from one favorite to another, in the same play. This power is at bottom 
the power of continuing to visualize while the figures move. 

With such visualizing power goes often a clear view of the background. In 
Li Biaus Desconus is a feeling for light and darkness comparable to that of Mrs. 
Radcliffe or of Coleridge, to scenes in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. When the 
knight sits on his charger in the enchanted castle of the thousand windows and 
the thousand lights, with the thousand musicians clashing their instruments at him 
in one moment, and the whole brilliant scene plunged into utter darkness and 
silence at the next, the fantastic scene is made convincing to us by our own 
sense of the threat of darkness as a concealer. Renaud also understood, as Mrs. 
Radcliffe understood and as Hawthorne or Stevenson understood, the alarming 
and puzzling effect of sound without accompanying sight. The cries from the 
distance in the wood, which cause the Bel Inconnu to hurry to the rescue, throw 
his train into terror. Renaud never fails, either, to note the lighting of his scene; 
and this imparts reality even to the fantastic, as we have said. The coming-in of 
candles or torches is always mentioned by him, as it is in the Merchant of Venice; 
and moonlight is not omitted from his descriptions. 

It is sensitiveness in the writer which brings the background into the story ; 
it is sensitiveness which works against the earlier medieval “contempt of interval,” 
to borrow a phrase from Leigh Hunt. And it is a failure of sensitiveness, an 
oppression by the stereotype, which deprives Transition narrators of the power 
to see and to develop motives, to see behind their characters, and even to see 
those characters distinctly, whether in life or in another man’s pages. The Transi- 
tion writer saw a list of personages, but saw not the method of portrayal; he 
saw a sumptuous array of trappings, for instance in the Knight’s Tale, and be- 
lieved, like the youthful Keats gazing into the clouds, that high romance was em- 
bodied in those symbols. Such poems as the Flower and the Leaf, the Assembly 
of Ladies, the Belle Dame sans Merci (translated), are episodes rather than nar- 
ratives, and are handled like tapestry. The garden, the bridge, the pavilion, the 
mounted knight, the coiffed and jewelled ladies, the stiffly marshalled or conven- 
tionally dancing courtiers, are all seen in the same focus. But even when the 
foreground is more fully treated, as in the Churl and the Bird or the much longer 


34 ENGLISH VERSE 


Troy Book, there is small gain in character-presentation. Nearest reality is the 
Medea of the Troy Book, a creature whom no ineptitude can wither or stale; 
but both there and in the Brunhilde of the Fall of Princes we must reckon with an 
earlier source. And we observe that when Lydgate goes outside courtly models 
for his material, as in the prologue to Thebes, in his Fables, in his Mumming at 
Hertford, we find no release of ability to draw character, not so much as in the 
clumsy prologue to the tale of Beryn. Nor do we find it in Hawes, when he shifts 
from his pedantic-romantic plot to introduce Godfrey Gobelive. And when the 
bourgeois spirit gets expression in character-portrayal, it has no better vision; it 
changes material but hardly method. Its list is of rapscallions instead of the 
illustrious unfortunate, the Hye Way to the Spyttelhous instead of the Fall of 
Princes ; but the list remains, and the lack of vision remains. The latter comes, 
however, from a different source, from the insensitiveness of ignorance instead of 
from the insensitiveness caused by a paralyzing stereotype. When the ignorance 
is remedied, vision is attained; a sympathy for the human being, a consciousness 
of his surrounding life, are felt and expressed, and not till then. There is no more 
sense of snow and wind in the Hye Way to the Spyttelhous than there is of salt 
air in the Ship of Fools, and no more intention of recognizing it. Lydgate’s rain- 
storms and sunrises in the Troy Book (for which we do not know his original) © 
and Douglas’ prefaces to the separate books of his Aeneid-translation are the 
best example in formal Transition verse of a natural background to narrative; 
but a mere touch during the course of the story, such as Nevill’s unexpected picture 
of evening or Henryson’s opening of the Testament of Cresseid, is of more value 
than set pieces. 

But in the very midst of the Transition muddling of structure and 
blurring of vision, the Transition’s blindness to the method of Chrétien or of 
Renaud or of Chaucer, a greater than Henryson, in England, laid his hand upon the 
already stiffened mass of romantic narrative, and raised the Arthurian story to 
permanent life. Malory’s imagination was of far larger calibre than that possessed 
by Henryson; and to his sense-perception, his power of seeing, hearing, and 
feeling his personages, the way in which his eye holds the picture while his 
figures move, Malory adds a strong sense of structure. Perhaps the huge com- 
pilations of the latter Middle Ages brought gain to narrative in the sense of 
Causality which was pressed out of event by the sheer weight of material. 
Malory’s greatest service to English narrative is here, a greater even than his 
character-portrayal, than his prose. He bound the Arthurian stories together by 
a sense for causality, for the unescapable consequences of human conduct ; through 
the juxtaposed mass of separate narratives he drew the twisted thread of the 
three great Loyalties, to sovereign, to the beloved lady, to God; and by the shat- 
tering of the Round Table he showed that no man held those three in equal 
reverence, that no man served the Ideal, that punishment for such failure came 
here upon earth. 

Malory works toward tragedy, as Henryson toward comedy. The actual 
drama of the period gains now an inch here, now an inch there, as it struggles 
with allegory, with biblical fact, with history. From each of its sources, ex- 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION 35 


cept perhaps from the saint’s legend, it received some advantage; allegory gave 
training in plot, the Bible-story stimulated to character-portrayal ; and when the 
actual historical personage appeared among the abstractions of the Morality, 
the step to the chronicle-play was short. But in the earlier plays of the 
great period which succeeded, power over character and over scene is still much 
more evident than power over structure; even of Marlowe this is true. The 
lesson of structure was slowly learned by England; not until the long period 
of externalized morality was past, and the moral struggle restored to its natural 
arena, the human heart and our present life, could the growth of drama or of 
narrative proceed. All through the Transition, the courtly maker and the cleric 
were controlled by the stereotypes of their class. 

That those stereotypes held so firm was due to the limitation of education 
and to the power of patronage. Their dominance in verse, especially, followed 
from the theory that the poet must write with a moral purpose, must use the cloak 
of fable in order to teach. The prose workman, not so restricted, might be sup- 
posed to move more freely; yet this freedom was not sought. From the argu- 
mentation of Wyclif and from the Boethius-translation of Chaucer down to 
Lord Berners’ translation of Froissart, the major prose works are the encyclo- 
pedias of Trevisa, the travels of “Mandeville,” the treatises of Pecock and of 
Fortescue, the translated romances and original prefaces of Caxton, and the 
Arthurian compilation of Malory. Briefer things, themselves longer than Cax- 
ton’s prefaces, also exist, of which one of the most interesting is the Serpent of 
Division, presumably by Lydgate, with which may be compared the addition to 
the Brut, or prose chronicle of England, ascribed to him; or Bokenam’s Mappula 
Anglie, the Paston correspondence, the Gesta Romanorum, the Master of Game, 
etc. The proportion of narrative is small, and of independently-handled narra- 
tive even smaller. 

What strikes us in most of these men is the freer stronger use of language 
and the partial release both of the mind and of the senses, as compared with con- 
temporary work in verse. Much less, too, is heard of a moral purpose,—a fact 
perhaps allied; and we constantly feel, even with the translator Trevisa at the 
opening of the century, that a personality is speaking. Already with him the Eng- 
lish is vigorous and racy, despite some pedantries; and “Mandeville” surpasses 
him. In those fantastic Travels, moreover, there is narrative movement; the story 
marches as no tale by Lydgate knows how to step. Pecock’s subject is of no such 
fascination as are the Oriental wanderings of Mandeville, and although his reason- 
ing interests us, as showing both his mental quality and his command of English, 
neither he nor Fortescue exerted such influence as did the narrators, preéminent 
among whom are Caxton and Malory. Caxton is far the more medieval; he is 
constantly conventional in choice of subject, in sentence movement, and in phrase. 
Like Trevisa and like Lord Berners, he favors paired terms and rhetorical pleo- 
nasms, and labors with involved sentences. But either his subject or his fidelity 
to ornate correctness pleased his public; the more medieval his work, the more 
editions it apparently received. His Golden Legend was a better seller than his 
Malory. 


36 ENGLISH VERSE 


Malory stands by himself in this list of prose writers, as he does among 
romancers. He and Mandeville are both, as narrators, concerned frankly with 
their story; but he alone creates an atmosphere. Mandeville can and does obtain 
credence as well as interest; he knows as well as Swift the value for the human 
mind of the trivial as proof of the tremendous. But we remain outside Mande- 
ville’s narrative, absorbed and delighted observers, but independent, detached. 
Malory removes our world and substitutes his. The integrity of his conviction, 
his feeling, his imagination, is such that we return from him with difficulty to 
that smaller and meaner life which we have called normal. 

There is the same integrity in Malory’s use of English; his speech, his phras- 
ing, are as dignified as those of an epic, but entirely simple and sincere. He 
was not surpassed or equalled in English until, in 1549, the gravely simple diction 
and noble rhythms of the first Prayer Book were composed. Between him and 
it the tale of English writing, verse or prose, is a sorry one. There is no suavity, 
no simplicity, and no dignity in Hawes; he is hopelessly muscle-bound. There 
is no freedom in Barclay; although he has the wit to reach for novel forms, his 
touches of reality and independence are clamped down among didactic phrases. 
Skelton is but half free, medieval rather than humanistic, a lampooner and rebel 
more because he is unsuccessful than because he has ideas. George Cavendish 
too is but half free; with him, however, the division is between verse and prose, 
the former stiffly imitative, the latter honest, vigorous, alive—a real story told with 
a real voice. His life of his master Wolsey is almost the first of English biogra- 
phies, antedated only by More’s unfinished life of Richard III; and it has had few 
superiors in the four centuries since it was written. But while Cavendish was writ- 
ing it, in the group of versifying courtiers around Henry the Eighth the “mode” 
was supreme, whether in song or in translation. Wyatt, Surrey, Nevill, Morley, 
obey it, each in his own way; and although the two last-named are more woodenly 
subservient to pattern, the two greater men are fortunate partly because their pat- 
terns are fortunately chosen. In pure song, indeed, they are truly English, and 
truly poets. But no man rises above an original, above a standardized pattern, 
as Malory had, until Cavendish creates biography, until the Prayer Book is written, 
and until with Spenser, Shakespeare, and the King James version of the Bible, 
the freedom of English utterance is attained. 

Removal of the pressure of the stereotype does not restore at once the long- 
atrophied vision; from a hundred and fifty years’ denial of perceptual power, 
from protracted over-assimilation of a few facts, from the exhausting effect of 
overworked motives and words, a national literature does not recover at a bound. 
With the appearance of a foreign-bred Humanism among English scholars and 
in a small class of aristocratic poets, the Renaissance gets under way in Eng- 
land. As society settles, as education spreads, as intercourse grows freer, the 
new modes of expression find more favor. But earlier themes and tendencies 
last over; and it takes a long time for Englishmen to obtain control of rhythm 
and of structure, two lessons which Humanism could not teach them. Yet, 
slow as was the process of social readjustment and education, slow as was the 
assimilative power of the new public, England’s attainment of balance, in the 


GENERAL INTRODUCTION Sa 


Elizabethan age, was on all the higher level because the sequence of events which 
brought her there had been just what it had been. The defeat of the Armada 
was a spectacular success indeed, a poweiful stimulus to English patriotic pride 
and to the sense of national unity. But it came after a long series of lesser in- 
conspicuous successes in the economic field, after a definite rise in the average of 
English comfort and security in private life, after the assertion of English re- 
ligious self-control. The sense of unity and confidence derived from resistance 
to an invader had a more ample national basis on which to rest, because of pre- 
vious partial adjustments. _ The Armada success did not, like Agincourt, en- 
gender forces hostile to regular growth; it was a definite and healthy phase 
in England’s attainment of self-poise, partly because of the social and religious 
resettlement which preceded it. 

And so with literature. The various elements of the English change passed 
slowly and firmly into relation with one another. That challenge of the moral 
basis of life which follows on a change in social structure, that challenge of the 
social basis of life which accompanies a new view of morality, took effect each 
upon the other, and were expressed in new moulds of form. The English 
Renaissance is far more socially penetrative, more deeply felt on literature, 
more earnest and ethical than that of the Continent, because in England a bour- 
geois self-assertion which might, with the break-up of feudal inhibitions, have 
assumed a more arrogant and illiterate form, was reined in by both Humanism 
and the Protestant Reformation. It persisted, but it was modified. A politically 
homogeneous and articulate people and a national sense of conduct were growing 
alongside that revival of perception, that increase of experiencing power, which 
permitted a revival of expression. It is not surprising that the dominant literary 
form of this fusion and interaction should be the drama; for no other utter- 
ance is so definitely social, and none admits of such a variety of tones. Every 
vulgarity, every pedantry, every vice, every upleap of vigor, every dignity of 
Englishmen is poured into the alembic of Shakespeare. 


38 ENGLISH VERSE 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST I 


The student will derive profit from Green’s Short History of the English People 
and from G. M. Trevelyan’s History of England, 1926; from H. W. C. Davis’ edition, 
Oxford, 1924, of Medieval England; from G. C. Coulton’s Chaucer’s England, and 
from Trevelyan’s England in the Age of Wycliffe; from H. S. Bennett’s The Pastons 
and their England, Cambridge, 1922; from Eileen Power’s Medieval English Nun- 
neries; from E. Male’s L’art réligieux de la fin du moyen-age en France, Paris, 1908, 
and from Male’s other work; from Ramsay’s Lancaster and York, Wylie’s Henry 
IV, and Cora L. Scofield’s Edward IV; from Vickers’ England in the Later Middle 
Ages, London, 1914; from Huizinga, Herbst des Mittelalters, Munich, 1924 (transl. 
London, 1924 as The Waning of the Middle Ages); from the Legacy of the Middle 
Ages, Oxford, 1926. 


G. Le Bon, The Crowd, a Study of the Popular Mind, transl. London, 1896, from the 
French. Many reéditions. 

Th. Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, N. Y., 1899, 

G. Tarde, The Laws of Imitation, transl N. Y., 1903, from second French ed. 

G. Tarde, L’Opinion et la Foule, third ed., Paris, 1910. 

W. Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, N. Y., 1916. 

W. Lippmann, Public Opinion, N. Y., 1922. 


The Complaint to his Lady is printed in Skeat’s Oxford Chaucer, i :360. 

The Black Knight, see ed. by Skeat in vol. vii of the Oxford Chaucer. 

Walter’s Guiscard and Sigismonde, see Zupitza in Vierteljahrschrift fiir Kultur u. 
Litteratur der Renaissance, i:63-102 (1886). See diss. by Clarence Sherwood, 
Berlin, 1892. 

“How a Lover Praiseth his Lady,” see ModPhil 21 :379-395. 

The Flower and Leaf, the Assembly of Ladies, the Court of Love, La Belle Dame 
sans Merci, are included in Skeat vii as above. 

The Isle of Ladies, see diss. by Jane Sherzer, Berlin 1905. 

Hye Way to the Spyttelhous, by Robert Copland, is printed in Hazlitt’s Early Popular 
Poetry, 1866, vol. iv. 


Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages, ed. A. P. Newton, N. Y., 1926. 

Dawn of Modern Geography, C. R. Beazley, London, 3 vols., 1897, 1906. 

Mandeville’s Travels are ed. for EETS by Paul Hamelius, 2 vols., 1919, 1923. See 
also Sir George Warner’s ed. for the Roxburghe Club, 1889. 

Le Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory, Vida D. Scudder, London and N, Y., 1917. 

For Lydgate’s addition to the Brut, see Robinson in Harvard Studies v. 

Bokenam’s Mappula Anglie is printed by Horstmann in EnglStud 10. 

The Master of Game, by Edward duke of York, is ed. Baillie-Grohman, 1904 and 1909. 

Standard but special reference-works, such as Thorndike’s History of Magic or Kings- 
ford’s studies in the English Chronicles, will be found in the separate refer- 
ence lists of this volume. 


JOHN WALTON’S BOETEIUS-TRANSLATION 


The poem here discussed is in most of the manuscripts marked as by 
“Johannes Capellanus,” in one manuscript at least (the Phillipps) as by ‘“Ca- 
pellanus Johannes Tebaud alias Watyrbeche.” In the early and carefully- 
written volume belonging to Balliol College (A), the author’s name is given as 
“John Walton nuper canonicus de Oseneye”; and in the 1525 print of the poem 
an acrostic at the close not only names “Johannes Waltwnem” as author but 
states that his patroness was Elizabeth Berkeley. Nothing more is known of 
John Walton except that his work is definitely dated 1410 by a number of the 
MS-colophons; Elizabeth Berkeley was probably daughter to that Thomas lord 
Berkeley who employed Trevisa to translate various encyclopedic works, and 
wife to Richard earl of Warwick, himself the reputed author of a little courtly 
verse, and Lydgate’s patron for the Pedigree of Henry the Sixth. In such case, 
it was their daughter the countess of Shrewsbury who commanded of Lydgate 
his Guy of Warwick; and the family, with its protégés Trevisa, Walton, and 
Lydgate, make one of the literary “groups” of the fifteenth century. Elizabeth 
countess of Warwick married before May, 1399, and died in 1423. See pp. 
459-60 here. 

Already Thomas Warton, in his History of English Poetry (see ed. by 
Hazlitt iii:39-40) had identified Walton as the translator of this work; but the 
vagueness of “Johannes Capellanus” led various students to attribute it to John 
Lydgate. Such is the statement of Casley’s 1734 catalogue of the Royal MSS 
and of the 1838 catalogue of the Durham Cathedral MSS; also of Peiper in his 
1871 ed. of Boethius’ Consolation, and of Manitius in his 1911 history of 
medieval Latin literature included in the Handbuch der klassischen Altertums- 
kunde, ix, 2. The impossibility of Lydgate’s authorship is clear, however, to 
any student of the matter; the direct definite advance of the translator’s mind, 
the absence of digression and of rime tags, the comparative freedom of the verse 
from eccentric lines, are completely non-Lydgatian. Indeed, although Warton 
dismissed our versifier summarily as “contributing no degree of improvement 
to our poetry or our phraseology,” this Boethius-translation deserves more at- 
tention and credit than it has received. It was of course a mistake on Walton’s 
part, as ten Brink remarked, to force the whole work into verse,—a greater 
tactical error than Chaucer’s reduction of the whole to prose. For thereby is 
lost the element of variety, the change of key from reflective to lyrical, so defi- 
nitely sought by Boethius; and the use of verse for the whole imposes on the 
major portion of the work a key more appropriate to the minor portion. A some- 
what similar ill-judgment may be seen in the French translation of Boccaccio’s 
Fall of Princes, cf. p. 151 below. 

The work which Walton here translates is one of the most potent of the 
Middle Ages. It exerted upon. West-European letters an influence comparable 
only with that of the Roman de la Rose seven centuries later. Its author, An- 
icius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boethius, was born about 480 A.D., and was 
executed by the emperor Theodoric in 525. Of good family, he was raised to the 
consular dignity in 510, and was holding important government office when his 
remonstrances against the imperial policy brought upon him the suspicion and 


[39] 


40 JOHN WALTON’S 


wrath of Theodoric. He was thrown into prison, and there put to death. During 
a life of great political activity and responsibility, he had found time to translate 
several texts of Aristotle, with commentaries, which were the main source of 
later medieval knowledge of Aristotle; he also wrote on logic, and drew up 
manuals of arithmetic, music, geometry, etc., which were the standard for cen- 
turies. But the best-known and most influential of Boethius’ writings was his 
last, the De Consolatione Philosophiae, written while he lay in prison, and in 
the knowledge of approaching death. It is an interview, in Latin prose inter- 
spersed with verse, between the prisoner and Philosophy, who appears to him 
as a marvellous female figure, and discusses with him the secrets of the universe. 

The Consolatio not only made a profound impression on the medieval mind, 
but has remained interesting to modern students, as the many translations of it 
show. For the French versions, etc., see Stewart as below; English renditions 
are still more numerous. The earliest of these is by King Alfred, latest edition 
by Sedgefield, Oxford, 1899; to this is appended the alliterating Old Eng. ver- 
sion of the metres of Boethius. Chaucer’s translation is entirely in prose, but 
there is a stanzaic rendering by him of one metre, the “Former Age.” Of his 
first book there is a reshaping which exists in one MS (see note on A 26 of our 
text) and which may have been known to Walton when he speaks of “diverse 
men’? who had preceded him. Later than Walton are:—George Colvile in 1556, 
ed. Bax, London, 1897; Queen Elizabeth in 1593, ed. EETS 1899, with appendix 
containing nine metres translated by Sir Thomas Challoner ?1563; transl. by 
John Bracegirdle, 1603-09, in hexameter etc., specimen printed by Fliigel in 
Anglia, 14:499; by “I. T.” in 1609, prose and verse, printed in the Loeb Library 
Boethius, 1918; the metres of books i and ii by Henry Vaughan in his Olor 
Tscanus, 1651; by “S. E. M.”, London, 1654; by H. Conningesby, verse, 1695; 
by anon., prose and verse, Oxford, 1674; by Richard lord Preston, prose and 
verse, 1695; by William Causton, prose and verse, London 1730; by Philip Rid- 
path, prose and verse, London, 1785; by R. Duncan, Edinburgh, 1789; an anon. 
transl. of the metres, London, 1792; by H. R. James, prose and verse, London, 
1897, 1906; by W. V. Cooper, prose, London, 1902. 

Walton’s notion of a translator’s duty, as stated in his preface, is more than 
the usual patristic one of keeping the sense, whatever may happen to the word. 
He attempts to be true to the word also, so far as metrical exigencies permit; 
and although his “liftings” from Chaucer are frequent, he is often fortunate in 
his phrasing, and quite as likely to render the Latin correctly as was his great 
predecessor. His work, despite its borrowings, has vigor and honesty. And the 
handling of English rhythm by Walton is so much better than by either Hoc- 
cleve or Lydgate that he, with the translator of Palladius and the translator of 
Charles d’Orléans, deserves especial attention from students of the English metre 
written in this bewildered period. He is frequently driven by his verse-form to 
pad, but avoids the barren formulae to which Lydgate is so prone. He can be 
dignified without being floridly rhetorical; his most deliberate ornament is allit- 
eration, which he employs e.g. in the first metre of the first book. The care 
and intelligence with which he worked can be well seen in the difficult discussion 
of “‘prescience” in book v, prose 4. Chaucer’s cautious progress through this 
material was successful, but Walton’s restatement of it in verse was a real 


BOETHIUS-TRANSLATION 41 


task, even with the Chaucerian text before his eyes. The mentality which 
could acconiplish this is of an order quite other than the mentality of Hoccleve 
or of Lydgate; and we may note the scanty use of Boethius by Lydgate (see 
p. 185 below). Whether or not Walton knew the versifying of Boethius in 
Troilus’ soliloquy, Book iv of Chaucer’s poem, is a point as yet uninvestigated. 

Walton’s translation runs to more than 7,500 lines, in eight-line stanzas to 
the close of book iii, and thereafter in sevens, with a special prologue of Walton’s 
own composition marking the change. Four stanzas at the close return to the 
original construction. 

Manuscripts containing the work are fairly numerous. Schtimmer as below 
lists fourteen, viz.:—In the British Museum, Royal 18 A xiii, Harley 43, Harley 
44, and Sloane 554; in the Bodleian, Rawlinson poetry 151 and Bodley e Museo 
53; in Oxford colleges, Balliol 316 A and 316 B, New College 319, and Trinity 
College 21; in Cambridge, Gg iv, 18 of the University Library. Other MSS in 
Schiimmer’s list are Lincoln Cathedral A 4, 11, Durham Cathedral v ii, 15, and 
the MS formerly Phillipps 1099, now (1927) in the hands of Dr. Rosenbach, 
the New York collector and dealer. To this list Prof. Carleton Brown, in his 
Register of Middle English Religious Verse, adds five MSS :—the former Chet- 
wode MS, now McClean 184 of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge; the So- 
ciety of Antiquaries 134; Christ Church Oxford 151; Bodl. Douce 100; and St. 
John’s College Cambridge 196. A Copenhagen MS is mentioned by J. H. 
Wylie in Athen. 1892, i: 600. 

Walton’s poem was printed in 1525 at Tavistock Monastery in Devonshire 
(where was situate the second press established in England) by Thomas Rychard, 
at the request of Master Robert Langdon; the book is exceedingly rare. Brief 
extracts from the translation are given by Todd in his Illustrations of Gower 
and Chaucer p. xxxii (2 stanzas only); by Blades in his Caxton, ii:68; by 
Wiilker in his Altenglisches Lesebuch, 11 :56-59; by Stewart as below; by Skeat 
in his Oxford Chaucer, ii:xvi-xviii; by Fligel, Neuengl. Lesebuch, p. 99. Cos- 
sack and Schiimmer, as below, print much larger portions of the text. On Wal- 
ton see Warton’s HistEngPoetry, iii:39-40 of Hazlitt’s edition. 

For my text I have used the MS Royal 18 A xiii of the British Museum, a 
volume used also by Wilker, by Skeat, and by Schtimmer; some variant read- 
ings are given as stated, usually from the MS Balliol College 316 A. The Royal 
volume is on vellum, of 114 leaves, 914 by 614 inches, in a very neat square 
conventional hand, with careful capitals to stanzas, and marginal markings of 
metres and proses, etc. There is no other work in the volume. The Balliol 
MS contains, besides Walton, two short hymns; it also is on vellum, of 108 
folios, with a colophon giving Walton’s name and ecclesiastical status,—whereas 
the Royal’s colophon has the usual “per Capellanum Johannem.” These and 
other MSS are described by Schiimmer as below. 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST II 


Doyle, Official Baronage of England, 3 vols., London, 1886. 

Warwick, Richard de Beauchamp earl of; for a virelay by him see PMLA 22:597. 

Moore, Samuel, Patrons of Letters in Norfolk and Suffolk ca. 1450, ibid. 27 :188-207, 
28 :79-105. 


42 JOHN WALTON’S 


Stewart, H. F., Boethius, an Essay, London, 1871. 

Cossack, H., Ueber die altenglische metrische Bearbeitung von Boethius, de Conso- 
latione Philosophiae. Leipzig diss., 1889, pp. 69. 

Cossack uses the 1525 print for his analysis, which is of book i only; he 
proves the use of Chaucer by Walton. 

Fehlauer, Fr., Die englischen Uebersetzungen von Boethius’ de Consolatione Phil- 
osophiae, Berlin, 1909. Part pubd. as diss., K6nigsberg, 1908. 

Schiimmer, K., John Waltons metrische Uebersetzung der Consolatio Philosophiae. Un- 


tersuchung des handschriftlichen Verhaltnisses und Probe eines kritischen Textes, 
Bonner Studien 1914. Part pubd. as diss., 1912. 
Schiimmer’s “textproben” are book i entire, the first three sections of book 
iii and a selection from its latter half, the prologue to books iv and v, 
and part of book v. All in all, he gives over a third of the work. 
His apparatus of variants is printed below each stanza, and in his 
introd. he constructs a genealogical tree of MSS. 
Hittmair, R., Das Zeitwort “do” in Chaucers Prosa, Leipzig, 1923, diss., has a com- 
parison of the Boece with Alfred, Walton, Colville, and Queen Elizabeth. 
The Bodleian MS Auct. F 3, 5, which contains a prose transl. of book i of the 
Consolatio, is now marked Bodley 2684; see the Summary Catalogue i:492, and 


Liddell in Academy 1896 1:199. 


Recent studies on Chaucer’s translation are by B. L. Jefferson, Princeton, diss., 1917, 


and by Koch in Anglia, 46:1-51. 


[PREFACE anp PROLOGUE: METRE 1, PROSE 1] 


Insuffishaunce of cunnyng & of wyt 
Defaut of langage & of eloquence 
Pis work fro me schuld haue wibholden 


Zit 
Bot pat yowre hest hab done me violence 
Pat nedis most I do my diligence 5 


In thing bat passith myn abilite 
Beseching to youre noble excellence 
Pat be your help it may amended be 


- 
a 


This subtile matire of boecius 
Heere in this book of consolacion I0 
So hye it is so hard and curius 
fful (fer) abouen myn estimacion 
Pat it be noght be my translacion 
Defouled ne corrupt to god I praye 
So help me wib his inspiracion 15 
Pat is of wisdom bothe lok & keye 
3 

As fro be text bat I ne vary noght 
But kepe be sentence in his trewe entent 
And wordes eke als neigh as may be 

broght 
Where lawe of metir is noght resistent 20 
This mater whiche pat is so excellent 


12. Royal reads fair; Balliol 316 A, fer. 
24. Insertion from Balliol A 


And passeth both my cunnyng & my 
myght 

So saue it lord in bi gouernement 

Pat kannest reforme all bing (vn) to 
right 


4 


I haue herd spek & sumwhat haue y 
seyne 25 

Of diuerse men bat woundir subtyllye 

In metir sum & sum in prose pleyne 

This book translated haue full suffishaunt- 
lye 

In to englissh tonge word for word wel 
neye 

Bot I most vse be wittes pat I haue 30 

Pogh y may noght do so yit noght for 
thye 

With helpe of god pe sentence schale I 
saue 


5 


To chaucer pat is floure of rethoryk 

In englisshe tong & excellent poete 

This wot I wel no bing may I do lyk 35 
Pogh so bat I of makynge entyrmete 
And gower bat so craitily dop trete 


33. Balliol reads was flour, etc. 


BOETHIUS-TRANSLATION: A 43 


As in his book of moralite 
Pogh I to peym in makyng am vnmete 
3it most I schewe it forth pat is in me 40 


6 

Noght lyketh me to labowr ne to muse 
Vppon bese olde poysees derk 
ffor crystes feith suche ping schuld refuse 
Witnes vppon Ierom pe holy clerk 
Hit schold not ben a _ cristenmannes 

werk 45 
Tho fals goddes names to renewe 
ffor he pat hab reseyued cristes merk 
If he do so to crist he is vntrewe 


7 

Of bo pat crist in heuene blis schall 
Suche manere werkes schold ben set on 

side 50 
ffor certaynly it nedeb noght at all 
To (whette) now be dartes of cupide. 
Ne for to bidde bat Venus be oure gide 
So bat we may oure foule lustes wynne 
On aunter lest be same on vs betide 
As dede be same venus for hyre synne 


And certayn I haue tasted wonder lyte 
As of be welles of calliope 

No wonder bough I sympilly endite 

Yet will I not vnto tessiphone 60 
Ne to allecto ne to megare 

Besechin after craft of eloquence 

But pray pat god of his benignyte 

My spirit enspire wip his influence 


9 
So bat in schenschip & confusion 65 
Of all this foule worldly wrecchidnesse 
He help me in this occupacion 
In honour of pat suffrayn blisfulnesse 
And eke in reuerence of youre worthi- 
nesse 
This simple work as for an obseruance 
I schall begynne after my sympelnesse 
In wil to do your seruice & plesance 
EXPLECIT PREFACIO TRANSLATORIS 


INCIPIT PROLOGUS EIUSDEM SUPER 
LIBRUM BOECII 
10 
The while bat Rome was reignyng in hir 
floures 
And of be world held all pe monarchie 
Sche was gouerned penne be emper- 
oures 75 


49. Balliol A, blisse. 
52. Royal wete, Balliol whette. 


And was renounned wondir nobelye 

Til pride had set baire hertes vppon hye 
Penne gan thei to vsen cruelte 

And regne by rigour & by tyrannye 

In sore oppressioun of be commynalte 


11 
For right as pouert causeth sobirnesse 
And febilnesse enforseth continence 
Right so prosperite & sikernesse 
Pe moder (is) of vice & necligence 
And pouer also causeth insolence 85 
And often honour changep goode pewes 
Pere is none mo parelouse pestilence 
Pan hyhe estates gyffen vnto schrewes 


WZ 
Of which was nero oon pe principall 
Pat suche manere of tyrannye began 90 
pough he bare dyademe imperiall 
Yit was hym selfe a verry cursed man 
So cruelly he began to reigne ban 
He slowh his modir & his maistir both 
And myche he dide pat tellen I ne can 
Who so hab hit rede he (knowyth) well 
pe sothe 96 
13 
The cheef of holychirche he slowh also 
Seynt Paule & petir both vppon a day 
And after beym full many ober mo 
And of hym self it is I dar wel say 100 
pat paule writeth pus it is no nay 
And seith now is be forme of wickednesse 
And figure right of Antechristus lay 
In whom schall been all manere cursed- 
nesse 
14 
For pei bat trwly techeth cristes lore 105 
To maken men forletten of peire vice 
Antecrist will pursue peym perfore 
And all bis prechyng setten at no prise 
So was he gifen to lustes & delice 
In what desire bat comen to his poght 
He wolde it done wip outen more avise 
ffor no bing hereof spare wolde he noght 


15 
And he bat wolde agayn his vices speke 
Conseilyng hym his lustes to refreyne 
Wip outen more anon he wolde be 
wreke 115 


78. Balliol for to wvsen, etc. 
Beside stanza 11, in margin, is Nota per 
exemplum, 
84. Royal omits is; inserted from Balliol A. 
93. began; Balliol gan. 
96. Balliol as here; Royal knowt. 
110. Balliol bt what desire pt come unto, etc. 


44 JOHN WALTON’S 


He wolde him put in torment & in peyne 

And he bat wolde his lustes out wip 
seyne 

He was but dede if pat he wolde appere 

ffor suche a cause Boecius was slayn 

Of whom this processe techeb after 
heere 120 


16 


The yeere of crist fyue hondred & fiftene 
Whan anastasius was Emperour 

Boecius be same of whom I mene 

In Rome he was a nobie senatour 

Bot bo in manere of a conque(r)our 125 
Theodoricus regned in ytayle 

And rome he held as heed & gouernour 
He hadde it wonne by conquest & bataile 


17 


For anastasius was noght ilyke 

Ne noght so strong of meyne atte lest 

He was consentant pat theodorik 

Scholde regne in Rome & holde it atte 
hest 

And he wolde holde hym seluen in be este 

He seide it was accordant to his hele 

And for his ese in sothe he chese it 
meste 135 

ffor romayns ben ful perelus wt to dele 


18 


This kyng of rome pan theodorik 

Was full of malice & of cursidnesse 

And for causa he was an heretyk 

Pe cristen peple gan he sore to 
oppresse 140 

Boecius wib his besynesse 

Wibstode hym euere sparing none offence 

And hym presente ful often tyme expresse 

Reuersed (his) vnlawefull iuggementis 


19 


He spared noght be helbe of his estate 
But euer he spake ayayn his tyrannye 
Wherfor be kyng hym hadde sore in hate 
And hym exciled in to Lumbardie 

To prison in pe citee of Pavie 

Where ynne he was for a recreacion 150 
Be twyne hym selphe & philosophie 

He wrote bis book of consolacion 


117 out; Balliol ought. 

125. So Balliol; Royal in a manere. 

132. Balliol at his heste. 

141. MS Phillipps reads with all his, etc. 

144. So Balliol; Royal is. 

150. The MSS read was or he was; the print 
reads as. 


20 


In prose & metre enterchaungyngly 
Wib wordes set in colour wonder wele 
Of rethoryk endited craftily 155 
And schewyng bat bis welbis temporele 
As not to be desired noght a dele 

Ne worldly meschief noping for to drede 
Enforsyng vs be resoun naturale 

To vertu fully for to taken hede 160 


21 


When anastasius had made his fyne 

As tyme of age in to his deth him drewe 

Pan after hym was emperour Iustyne 

A noble knyght a feithful & a trewe 

ffor cristes lawes wonder wel he 
knewe 165 

And keped hem as a verry crysten man 

And heretikes faste he gan pursewe 

Pat arrians were cleped than 


22 


His letters in to Rome pan he sent 

fforto destroyen all pat heresye 170 

And fully gaf hym in comaundement 

Pat bei schulde putte hem out of com 
panye 

Theodoricus took bis wonder hyhe 

for he hym self was oonly oon of tho 

This message he repelled vtterlye 175 

And made a vow it schold not stande so 


23 


And swore but if be arrians moste 

Have fully pees & graunted hem ageyn 

He nold not leuen oon in all pe coste 

Of cristen feith bat he ne scholde be 
slayn 180 

And pus he bade pe messangers sayn 

Pat if he wold wt arrians stryve 

Seie to be Emperour in wordes playn 

Of cristen wil I leue noon on lyue 


24 


To constantinopill he sent anone 185 

Of senatowres whiche bat hym self leste 

And so among(es) ober pope Ione 

And bad paim laboren for baire avne 
beste 


157. Balliol beim ought to be, etc.; Harley 44 


Areen, etc. 

171. Balliol yaf hem. 

174. Cambr. and New Coll. read holly oon. 

175. One 1 of repelled is inserted with caret; 
Balliol repeled. 

178. MS New Coll. pes ygraunted. 

187. So Balliol; Royal among. 

188. Balliol, owne beste. 


BOETHIUS-TRANSLATION: A 45 


And rufullyche bei maden pbaire requeste 
Pat lIustyne schold pis maundement 

relees 190 
ffor cristen might noght be in reste 
But if he graunted arrians pees 


25 

The emperour his malice vnderstode 
Benyngly he graunted hap hur bone 
And wel he boghte pat (pis) was as 

gode 195 
Pat mater for to cessen til efte sone 
And beter mighte it afterward be done 
Be good avise of wyser ordinaunce 
Pe arriens so he lete alone 
To vsen forth baire olde gouernaunce 


26 

These messagers to pe kynges pay 
Retourned noght so hastely ageyn 
As he desired at assigned day 
Wherfor in hert he had gret dysdeyne 
And Boece pat lay in prisoun & in 

peyne 205 
Exiled in be citee of Pavie 
In myleyne ban he made him to be sleyne 
In Pavie been his bones sikerlye 


27 
And whan these messagers at be laste 
Returned were in hert he gan to 
brenne 210 
And pope Ioone in prison ban he caste 
All fer in to be citee of Ravenne 
And made him closid in a narwe denne 
Where he ne mighte torne him selfe ne 
wende 214 
And sothe to seyn he went neuer benne 
Bot of his lyfe right bere he made an 
ende 
28 


Also be worthi noble semachus 

Pat was a man full grounded all in grace 
Pat as in vertu was heroycus 

Pere left not suche an oper as he was 220 
Wib outen cause surfete or trespace 

At Ravenne eke he slowe hym cruellye 
And afterward in bat same place 

De next yere he deyde sodeynlye 


29 
And as seynt Gregor doth hym self 
write 225 
As his diologe makeb mencioun 
Pere was pat tyme an holy heremyte 
191. Balliol, be cristene. 


195. Insertion from Balliol. 
203. Royal assigned a day; cp. line 125. 


As he was in his contemplacioun 

He sawe theodorik in visioun 

By twine Symachus an(d) pope Iohn 
Right as a beef to his dampnacioun 
How he was led and after pt anon 


30 
In be yle of vicane was he casten benne 
Pat full is of a fury flaumbe of hell 
Per in alwey in peynes forto brenne 235 
And wt pe foule fendes forto dwell 
ffor tyrantes pat so fers been & fell 
Suche reward is arayed for paire mede 
I saye yow but as olde bookes tell 
Nowe to my purpose tyme is pat I 
spede 240 
31 
And euery lord or lady what (ye) be 
Or clerk pat likep for to rede pis 
Beseching lowly wib humylite 
Support where I haue seyde amys 


Correcte only bere bat nedeful is 245 
If worde & sentence be noght as hit 
scholde 


My self I am vnsuffishaunt Iwys 
ffor if I couthe haue beter done I wolde 


EXPLICIT PROLOGUS 


INCIPIT LIBER BOECII DE CONSOLACIONE 
PHILOSOPHIE: METRUM PRIMUM 


Carmina qui quondam studio florente 


peregi 


Flebiles heu mestos . cogor inire modos 


Allas I wrecche bat whilon was in welthe 
And lusty songes vsid for to write 250 
Nowe am y set (in) sorowes & vnselthe 
Wt mornyng nowe my myrbe I most 
respite 
Lo redyng muses techep me to endite (5) 
Of wo wt wepyng wetep bai my face 
Thus hath disese distryed all my delite 
And broght my blis & my bonechife all 
bace 
33 
And (pbogh) pat I (with) myschef nowe 
be mete 
Pat false fortune lourith bus on me (10) 
No drede fro me ne myghte bese muses 
lete 
Me for to sewe in myn aduersite 260 
My ioyes pei were all in my iolite 





241. Royal he; most MSS ye. 
246. Balliol or sentence. 

251. Balliol in; Royal omits. 
253. redyng; see Notes. 

257. Royal writes poght, witht. 


46 JOHN WALTON’S 


Of youthe that was so gladsom & so 
grene 
Nowe bai solacen my drery destine (15) 
And in myn age my confort nowe bei 
bene 
34 


Unwarly age cometh on me hast(e)ly 
Hyeng on me for harme pat | haue had 
And sorow his eld hap hoten to be ney 
Hore heris on myn hede to rathe ben 
sprad (20) 
All toome of blode my body waxep bad 
Myn ampty skyn begynneth to tremble & 


quake 270 
I knowe no cause wher of I scholde be 
glade 
But socourlese pus am I all forsake 
35 


A deth of men a blisful bing it were (25) 
If he wolde spare beym in baire lusty- 


nesse 

And (com) to bem pat ben of heuy 
chere 275 

When pai him call to slaken paire dis- 
tresse 


But out allas howe dull & deef is he 
Wryeng awey fro wrecches when bei 
clepe (30) 
And werneth penne wt wonder cruelnesse 
Pe eyen forto close bat waile & wepe 


36 


Bot while fortune vnfeithfull & vntrewe 
Of lusty lyf was to me fauorabill (34) 
ffull sodainly myn hede down he drewe 
Pe carefull oure of deth vnmerciabill 
But nowe pat sche so chaunging & 
vnstable 285 
Hath turned vnto me hire cloudi face 
This wrecchid lyf pat is vnconfortable 
Wyll drawe along & tarieth nowe allas 


37 
Wher to (ye) frendes made ye your 
awaunt (41) 
So often tymes of my felicite 290 


This worldly welthe is noght perseueraunt 
Ne neuere abidyng in stabilite 

ffor he bat fallip out of his degre 

Ye knowen wel pat stable was he noght 
Ne he stood neuer in full prosperite 

Pat in to meschef is so lowe Ibroght 
265, 275, 278. Royal writes hastly, cometh, wryng. 


285. Royal sche is so, etc. 
289. Royal and Balliol be. 


38 


[Prose 1] 


In mornyng bus I made my complaynt 
And for to write my fyngres gan I folde 
ffor drerynesse I wax all febill & feynt 
Pat of my lyf almost noping I tolde 300 
But vpward atte laste I gan beholde 

In sothe y seie so faier a creature 

I couthe hire noght discriuen bogh I 


wolde 
So semely was hire schap & hir feture 
39 
Sche was so wonder reuerent of hiere 
chere 305 


Hire colour eke so lyuely and so bright 

Hire eyen brend semyng as for clere (11) 

Passing full fer abouen mamis sight 

As bogh sche were full fresshe & clene 
of might 

As sche had ben full yongly of corage 

Yit semed (she) to euery worldly wyght 

Pat she was ouerpassid mamis age 


40 


’ Hire stature was of doutful Iugement 


Somtyme bus of comune mannes meet 
And somtyme was hire stature so 
(extent) 315 
Pat wt hire heed sche semed heuenes beet 
And ober while so hihe hire heed sche 


geet (21) 
Sche persed heuene & might no more be 
seyne 


So pat we muste be sight of hire forlete 
And all oure lokyng after was in veyne 


41 


Hire clothis wroght were of bredes smale 
But subtile craft of mater perdurable 
And wip hire hondes by hire awne tale 
Sche had hem wroght I trowe it be no 
fable 
Pe beaute of hem was full commend- 
able 325 
But dusk pei were forleten as for elde 
As ymages bat in smook had stonden 
stable (31) 
Pat ben not wasche ne wyped not but 
selde 


309. Balliol And pauh, etc. 

311. Balliol she, Royal he. 

314. Royal inserts ly after comune, with caret; 
the ink is different. 

315. See Notes. 

322. Several MSS read By subtile, etc. 


BOETHIUS-TRANSLATION: A 47 


42 


And in (be) hem bynepben made sche had 
So as I couthe it knowe a grekysshe - P - 
And in be bordure al abouen I rad = 331 
And pere also sche had made a -T- 

And so by twyne pe lettres might I see 
Like a laddire what pat evire it mende 
Wher on men myght all wey fro gre to 


gre Se 

ffro bare byneben vpward evire ascende 
43 

Neuerpeles sum men by violence (41) 


Had kyt pis cloth & pecis born awey 
Suche as bei mighte wt outen reuerence 
And dide bere wt as was vnto theier pay 
This creature of whom I gan yov say 341 
In hire right hond smale bookes were 

A septir also of full riche araye 

In certeyn in hire oper hand sche bere 


44 


And when (pis) womman sawe bese 
muses bere 345 
Vnto my beddes side approchen neye (50) 
Enditing wordes to my wepyng chere 
She gan to loke vppon hem feruentlye 
Who hab sche seide let in pis companye 
Pus wt hire song bis seek man _ to 
plese 350 
Pat noping helpeth hym of his maladie 
But rather doth hym greuaunce & disese 


45 


Lo pese it been sche seide pat folkes 
feden 

Wt swete venim of corrupcioun 

And tendre hertes maken forto bleden 

Wibe thornes of beire full affeccioun 

Pei sleyn be worpi fruytes of resoun (61) 

And only bryngen siknesse in vsage 

This is be kynde of beire condicioun 

And not at all be seknesse to aswage 360 


46 


Yif ye sche seide wt youre daliaunce 
Had fro me drawe sum foole vnprofitable 


345. Balliol pis, Royal bese. 


ffull lesse it wolde haue done me dis- 
plesaunce 

I myght haue sustened pat as sufferable 

ffor whi & suche a foole pat is vnable 365 

Mai not be harmed of my bysenesse (70) 

Bot beie pat euer in studie hath stonden 
stable 

Schuld not be founden wip youre foly- 
nesse 


47 


Bot goo ye filthes out of my presence 
Youre swetnesse wolde hym bryng at an 
ende 370 
I schall him saue wt salue of my science 
Pat schall be more confort to his kynde 
And bus bis companye away gan wende 
And bitterly abasched of beire blame 
Schewyng in sothe pe abyt of beire 
mynde 
Hangyng doon to grounde paire heed for 


schame 376 
48 

I than pat neigh for teres sawh right 
noght (81) 

Merueiled myche what myght bis wom- 
man be 

I wondred also gretely in my boght 

Pat so imperviall of a(u)ctorite 380 


Sche made pat meigne smertly for to flee 

I was abasched and heng myn hede to 
grounde 

What sche wold done or after seie to me 

Pan I abood & held me still a stound 


49 
Unto my bed ban gan sche me neighe 
nere 385 
And on be corner doun hire self sche 
sette (90) 


And sadly gan byholde vppon my chere 

Pat so was wt teres al bywette 

And right bus sche bygan wip oute lette 

Compleynyng on my perturbacioun 390 

ffor cause of meschef wher wib I was 
mette 

Of me sche made pis lamentacioun 


385. Balliol has not me. 


48 JOHN WALTON’S 


[BOOK II METRE 5: THE FORMER AGE] 


Full wonder blisseful was bat raber age 

When mortal men couthe holde hymself 
payed 

To fede beym self wt oute suche outer- 
age 

Wib mete pat trewe feeldes haue arrayed 

Wipb acorne paire hunger was alayed 5 

And so bei couthe sese paire talent 

Thei had yit no queynt craft assayed 

As clarry for to make ne pyment 


2 
To deen purpure couthe bei noght 
bebynke 
The white flees wyp venym tyryen 10 


Pe rennyng ryuer yaf hem lusty drynke 
And holsom sleep bei took vpon be grene 
The pynes pat so full of braunches been 
Pat was baire hous to kepe vnder schade 
The see to kerue no schippes were bere 

seen 15 
Per was no man pat marchaundise made 


3 
Thay liked not to sailen vp & doun 
But kepe hem self where bei weren bred 
Tho was ful huscht be cruel clarioun 
ffor eger hate per was no blood Isched 20 
Ne ber wt was non armour yit bebled 
ffor in bat tyme who durst haue be so 
wood 
Suche bitter woundes bat he nold haue 
dred 
Wip outen reward forto lese his blood 
4 


I wold oure tyme myght lerne certanly 25 
And pise maneres alwey wt vs dwelle 
But loue of hauyng brennep feruently 
More fersere ban be verray fuyre of helle 
Allas who was pat man bat wold him 


melle 
This gold & gemmes pat were keuered 
pus 30 


Pat first began to myne I can not telle 
Bot bat he fond a parelous precious 


[BOOK II METRE 7] 


Who bat supposen will vnwyttyly 

In renoun soueren ioyes for to be 

And late hym look vp in to be heuene on 
hye 

And so be holde vpon pat large cuntre 

And after lat hym to berpe see 

So narwe it is bat soore it schal hym 
schame 

Pat in so litell space of quantite 

He may it not fulfille wt his fame 


2 


Allas what aylen fierce men & proute 

To leften vp paire nekkes so in vayn 10 

This mortal yok whiche bat ye bere 
aboute 

Schal payse it downe vnto be grounde 
agayn 

Thogh pat youre resoun passe many a 
playn 

And so be spred aboute be many tung 

Pat of your lynage hyhe & souereyn 15 

In grete honour be fame of yow be 
sprung 


2. Balliol hemselfe. 
25. Balliol turne certeynly. 


3 


Yit deth depayseth all youre hyhe renoun 

Neiber greet ne lytell wil he none knowe 

Bot bothe in lyke he layth hire hedes 
doun 

And euene he makyth be hyhe wt be 
lowe 20 

Lo where ben nowe pe bones as we trowe 

Of brutus & fabricious be trewe 

Of sterne Catoun be fame is ouerblowe 

And maked now in lettres bot a fewe 


4 
And yit po men we (knoweth) not at 
all 25 
Thogh pat we knowe peyre fayre names 
so 
ffor pei be deth as euery ober schall 
Out of be sight be passed & agoo 
ffor wib bis lyf when pat ye passe fro 
ffor to be knowen pen ye ben vnable 30 
Youre worpi fame may no more doo 
But fleyen aboute veyne & variable 


25. Royal reads knowt; see ante, A 96. 


BOETHIUS-TRANSLATION: D 49 


5 
And if ye wene to drawe your lyf on long 
As be a lytell wynde of worldly fame 
As fooles ben ye done yow seluen 
wrong 35 


ffor when o cruell deth yow schall 
atame 

Al your renoum schal turnen in to grame 

Whiche pat ye han purchased so wt pride 

ffor after bat be styntyng of your fame 

Ye must ben another deth abyde 40 


[BOOK III METRE 12] 


Full blisfull is pat man pt may behold 
pe bright welle of verray blisiulnesse 
And well is hym pt may hym self vnfolde 
ffro bondes of bis worldly wrecchidnesse 
The poet Orpheus wip heuynesse 5 
His wyfes deth hap (weiled) wepyngly 
And wip his songes full of drerynesse 
Made wodes for to renne wonderly 


2 


He made stremis stonden & abyde 

Pe hynde fered not of houndes fell 10 
Sche lete be lyon lien by here syde 

The hare also ne dred noght a dell 

To see be hound hit lyked hym so well 
To here be songes bat so lusty were 

And boldly thei dorste to gidres dwell 
Pat nevire a best had of ober feere 


3 


And when pe loue gan brennen in his 
brest 

Of erudice moste hote & feruently 

His song bat had so many a wylde best 

So meke made to lyuen comynly 20 

They myghte hym not conforten vtterly 

Of hyhe goddes gan he to compleyn 

And seide bei deden wt hym cruelly 

That bei sent hym noght his wyf ageyn 


4 


He went ban to houses infernall 25 
And faste his strenges bere dressed he 
And sowned out be swete songes all 

Pat he had tasted of be welles thre 
While bat his modres dere Calliope 

Pat is goddesse & chief of eloquence 30 
To wordes pat moste piteous myght be 
As sorowe had taght hym be experience 


5 
And loue also pat doubleth heuynesse 
To helle began he his compleynt to make 
Askyng mercy bere wip lawnesse 35 


6. Royal veiled, Balliol wayled. 
9. Royal strennis. 


At pilke lordes of be schades blake 

And cerberus pat woned was to wake 

Wib hedes thre & helle yates kepe 

So hadden hym pese newe songes take 

The swetnesse made hym forto falle on 
slepe 40 

6 

The fuyres pat ben vengoures of synne 

And surfetoures smyteb so wt feere 

ffor heuynesse pt pis man was ynne 

They gan to mourne & weped many a 
tere 

Ne bo be swift wheele had no powere 45 

To torne about be heed of (Yxion) 

Ne tantalus for thrist all bogh he were 

fforpyned longe watire wolde he none 


7 
The gryp pat ete be mawe of tycius 
And tyred on hit longe tyme be fore 50 
This song to hym was so delicius 
He left it of & tyred it no more 
And when bat orpheus had mourned sore 
Than seide be Iuge of helle peynes strong 


Pyte me hap quyt I will restore 55 
This man (his) wyf bus wonnen wt his 
song. 


Bot with a lawe pis gift will I restreyne 

Pat vnto he this bondes haue forsake 

If he beholde vpon his wyf ageyne 

His wyf fro hym eft sone will we take 60 

Bot who to louers may a lawe make 

ffor loue is rathir to hym self a lawe 

When he was neygh out of be bondes 
blake 

He turned hym & erudice he sawe 


9 
Allas he lost & left his wif be hynde 
This fable lo to yow perteyneth right 
ffor ye bat wolde lyften vp your mynde 
In to be hye blisfull souereyn light 
41. fuyres; so Balliol. Read furyes. 


46. Royal and Balliol, yaon, 
56. Royal writes is. 


50 JOHN WALTON’S 


If ye eftsone turne doun youre sight 
In to pis foule wrecchid erthly dell 70 


Lo all bat evire your labour hab you dight 
Ye loose it when ye loken in to hell 


EXPLICIT LIBER TERCIUS BOECII DE CONSOLACIONE PHILOSOPHIE 


PREFACIO TRANSLATORIS IN LIBRUM QUARTUM & QUINTUM 


[Walton here inserts a preface, nine stanzas of seven lines, lyrical] 


O hye & riche tresour of science 

And wisdom whiche in god eternally 

Conteyned is so pat his iugementes 

Ne mowe not be enserched certanly 

Neither be wey be knowen vtterly 5 

Be whiche pis wonder worldes gouer- 
naunce 

He kepith in suche a certayn ordy- 
naunce 


Who wist his wit when he pis world 
began 
Or who was he pt was his conseillour 
When no thyng was who was pt gaf hym 
pan 10 
To whom he is in daunger as dettour 
Of hym is all for he is creatour 
Be him it is bat all bing Is susteyned 
In hym is all bing kyndly conteyned 
3 
Lo of so hye a matre for to trete 15 
As after bis myn auctowr doth pursue 
This wote I well my wyttes ben vnmete 
The sentence forto saue (in) metre trewe 
And not forthi I may it not eschewe 
Ye ben be cause why I mote don pus 20 
And schewe my seluen here presumptu- 
ous 
4 
Of hap of fortune & of destine 
Pat marred hap full many a mannes 
mynde 
Supposyng bat oure kyndely liberte 
Thus to & fro must all wey turne & 
wende 25 
So pt oure werkes to a certan ende 
Constreyned ben wher pt we will or noght 
So pat none ober wise bei may be wroght 


5 
To speken of divine purveaunce 
Pt all bing knowith or it be bygonne 30 
No worldly wight may haue pat suff- 
saunce 
With all be wit & clergie pat bei konne 


18, 36. Balliol &c. have in, we; Royal omits. 


No more pan perce the myddes of be 
sonne 

As wip be litell vigour of baire sight 34 

Wel myche more it passeth mannes myght 


6 
And bat (we) stonden in oure arbitrye 
As fully set in verray liberte 
So bat we mowe chesen wilfully 
Bothe goode & euel bothe wel & wo to be 
And yit pat god in his eternyte 40 
So knoweth all pt evire schall betide 
Who can pis two compownen & devide 


It is not elles bot pat oure desire 

Wolde kyndely bat conseyt comprehende 
Right as we seen a litel flaumb of fuyre 45 
How scharp it makeb it seluen to ascende 
And not forpi it failleb of his ende 

And is full fer from theder pat it scholde 
So may we penken or tell(en) what we 

wolde 


8 
Bot fuyre right of movynge of nature 50 
Behold how scharp it makep it & light 
And all so ferforth as it may endure 
How it enforceth forto stye vp right 
Bot we wolde haue not elles but a sight 
And knowe pe height of goddes priuete 
And will oure self all wey in erthe be 


9 
To be pat art the welle of sapience 
Almyghti lord this labour I commyt 
Thogh I be fer fro craft of eloquence 
Enforce pou my connyng & my wit 60 
This mater forto treten so pat it 
Be to bi honour & to pi plesaunce 
So take it lord into thi gouernaunce 


INCIPIT LIBER QUARTUS 
[Prose 1] 


And when (my) maistresse philosophie 
Kepyng all wey hire sobirnesse & hire 
chere 65 


64. Royal omits my; supplied from Balliol. 


BOETHIUS-TRANSLATION: E Bl 


This song had songen wonder lustilye 
So pat full sad all wey hire wordes were 
I gan to speke & seide in pis manere 
Noght all forgeten myn oppressioun 

I made hire make an interrupcioun 70 


O souereigne gidoresse of verrey light 
Youre resouns ben so myghti & so fyne 
Anon to pis & open to my sight 
As in baire (speculacioun) devine 
Whiche as ye seide for angir & for 
pyne 75 
fforgeten was (& falle) out of my poght 
Bot yit beforn (byknowen) were pei not 


Bot pis is most my cause of heuynesse 

So good a gouernour as hauen we 

How bere may be so myche wikked- 
nesse 80 

And suffred so vnponysched to be 

How wonderful is pis now deme ye 

And this wel more encresep my doloures 

Pat wickednesse regnep in his floures 


And now not onely vertu wanteb mede 
Bot felons han defouled it & schent 86 
And in be stede of synne & coursidhede 
Now vertu bereth peyne & (ponysche- 
ment ) 

Bot in be rewme of god omnipotent 
Pat seeth all bis & onely good he will 

I may compleyne & wonder wel be skyll 


Than seide sche bus a wonder ping it 
were 

Abhomynable & verry menstruouse 

If as bou feynest & supposest here 

In a so well disposed lordes house 95 

If vesselles bat ben riche & preciouse 

Schuld so despised & defouled be 

And foule vessell be made in preciouste 


Bot sikerly sche seide it is noght so 

ffor if tho thynges stondeth formely 100 

That we before bis haue consented to 

Now be be help of souereyn god on hye 

Of whom here he speketh (ententifly) 

Thow schalt here after fully knowe & 
seen 


Pat good folkes all wey myghti ben —_105 

And wicked folkes vnmyghti bere ageyne 

Ne mede may fro vertu noght disseucre 

74, 88, 103. Royal writes spectaculacioun, poyn- 
yschement, entiflye. 


76. Royal writes was for & all out, etc.; 77, it 
writes we knowen. Readings from Balliol. 


And pat bere is no vice wipouten peyne 
And good folke of welbe faillen nevire 
And wicked folk ben infortunat euere 
And myche pyng pat to byn hertes ese 
Availen schall and pi compleynt (appese) 


Now here beforn I haue be schewed 
expresse 
As pou hast herd & seen it plenerly 
Whiche is be forme of verrey blisful- 
nesse 115 
And where pou schalt it fynde verrayly 
Lo all bis ouerpassen now will I 
Whiche pat we moste over passe nede 
And to my purpose faste I schall me 
spede 


Unto thi home I schall pe schewe a 
wey 120 

And pennes schall I pycche into pi mynde 

Pat it arisen into height may 

Al heuynesse left & put behynde 

My path I will pe lede be be hand 

And cariage my self I schal be fynde 125 

Al hole & sound into byn owne land 


[iv, Metre 1] 


Full swyft been my fetheres in paire 
flight 

Pat stieng into hyhe heuene ariseth 

And when pei be into a mynde Ipight 
Pe erthe ben it hatep & despiseth 130 
And settep all at (noght) as he deviseth 
De speere of eyre he passeth all aboue 
Behynde his bak he seeth be cloudes houe 


That mynde also be spere of fuyre trans- 


cendeth 
That is so hoot be movynge of be 
heuene 135 


And to pe sterred places he ascendep 

Thurgh out be speres of planetes seuene 

And wt be sonne his wey he ioyneb 
euene 

So at be laste he meteb wt be old 

Saturnus whos effectes ben so cold 140 


So is pis sotill mynde made a knyght 
Of god pat is be souereyn sterre clere 
And (so) be cercle of be sterres bright 
Pe whiche ye may behold on nyghtes here 
Wt his recours he passeth all in fere 145 
And in theire speres be holden wele 

Pe manere of beire movynge euery dele 


112, 131. Royal reads aplese, not. 
143. Royal omits so. 


52 JOHN WALTON 


And well he wot bat goddes ben bai not 
Pe hyest heuen he leueth hym behynde 
Till bat he haue araysed vp his poght 150 
Anone to hym pat auctour is of kynde 
This worpi lyght he putteb in his mynde 
Pat of bis round world is lord & kyng 
Pat kepeth & gouerne} all ping 


The swyft cours of sterres meveth he 
Iuge of binges bright & souereyn 
Hym self stedfaste evire in oo degre 
If bis wey may reduce be ageyn 

Vnto pi place pou schalt pi self seyn 


Lo here it is pat I so longe haue soght 160 
My cuntre & til now I knewe it noght 


Fro hennes I come & in pis place right 

I thynke to (abyden) & to dwell 

And if pe list to cast a doun pi sight 

Into pis foule derk erthly selle 165 

Be holden myght bou bere tyrantes felle 

Whiche bat of wrecches ben Idrede full 
wyde 

Out of this lond exiled for bere pryde 


163. Royal writes byden. 
166. Royal be halden, ete. 


THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


Of the English followers of Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve and John Lyd- 
gate are best known to modern students. Both were grown men at the time 
of Chaucer’s death in 1400, and Hoccleve at least knew his master personally ; 
but there is no evidence that they knew of each other’s work or of each other’s 
existence. Their lives ran in different grooves. 

The country-born Lydgate entered a monastery while still a boy, and so far as 
we know spent his life thus. Hoccleve was a Londoner by adoption if not by birth, 
became a clerk in the Privy Seal office when he was about twenty, and there 
apparently remained. From his many autobiographical allusions it seems that 
he was a tavern-haunter and a waster of money, that after being disappointed 
of a clerical post in the Church he drifted into marriage, that he suffered under 
a long period of mental illness or madness, and that he turned, verses in hand, 
from one noble patron or government official to another in the hope of money- 
reward to eke out the irregular payments of the Crown. He was probably born 
about 1368; for he gives his age as fifty-three in a poem which terms Gloucester 
the Lieutenant of the realm; this was in 1421-22, while Henry V was still in 
France. He dates his translation of the De Regimine Principum, or Regement 
of Princes, made for Henry V, in 1411-12, and there says that he had been for 
twenty-four years at his Privy Seal desk; he must accordingly have entered 
the office when about twenty. An allusion to Prince Edward’s tutor, in a poem 
addressed to Edward’s father the Duke of York, may date that poem 1446-48, 
when the prince was four to six years old. Thereafter we know no more of Hoc- 
cleve, nor have we any record of pension-payments to him for many years pre- 
ceding. An entry in the Close Rolls, pointed out by Professor Hulbert, shows 
that Richard II granted a corrody, or maintenance chargeable on a church, to 
Hoccleve in 1395; this the poet transferred in the first year of Henry the Fourth. 

The earliest of his poems to which we can assign a date is the Letter of 
Cupid, translated from the French in 1402, as the writer tells us. In 1406, 
probably, he wrote La Male Régle, a series of self-reproaches for his irregular 
life, ending with a petition to the lord treasurer to pay him his overdue pension ; 
this annuity had been granted him by Henry IV soon after accession. In 1411-12 
Hoccleve compiled the Regement of Princes, from several sources; and in 1415 he 
wrote a severely pious reprimand to the heretic Oldcastle. Perhaps ten years 
later, in the Complaint and the Dialogue with a Friend, he talks of an inter- 
vening illness, says he is fifty-three years old, and mentions the return of Glou- 
cester from France (1421). For the duke’s pleasure Hoccleve then translates and 
appends to the Dialogue the Gesta Romanorum story of the Innocent Persecuted 
Wife,—Jereslaus’ wife. His translation of the tractate Learn to Die, from Suso’s 
Horologium Sapientiae, also (probably) planned for Gloucester, and a second 
Gesta-story similarly appended, are later work. Both pairs of poems, and the 
Complaint which serves as introduction to the earlier, were transcribed in a 
sequence and sent to the Countess of Westmoreland in a copy which still exists 
at Durham. If this Countess was the widowed daughter of John of Gaunt, then 
living at the same castle of Sheriff Hutton which was later the scene of Skelton’s 
Garland of Laurel, she was the woman to whom Sir Thomas Morton in 1431 be- 


[53] 


54. THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


queathed a copy of Gower’s English poem, and the same woman who after her 
nephew Henry V’s death applied to the Council for the return of books she 
had lent him. 

Other poems by Hoccleve are brief, and are either devotional,—including the 
Mother of God so long ascribed to Chaucer,—or occasional verse often of the 
begging-letter type. All in all, he has left about 13,000 lines of verse, written 
in stanzas of seven or eight and a few of nine lines, and including four roundels. 
Neither this amount of productivity nor Chaucer’s 34,000 lines of verse (ex- 
clusive of the Romaunt-translation), looms very large beside Lydgate’s ca.140,000 
lines ; but, it is needless to say, there are various factors to be considered in making 
a comparison. 

Both Hoccleve’s production and his range of production are very much 
smaller than those of Lydgate. There are in his work no long romantic-epic 
narratives, no lives of saints, no allegories, no tapestry or fresco-poems, no courtly 
love-addresses, no beast-fables, no mummings. The religious-didactic is Hoc- 
cleve’s theme whenever he is not autobiographic; but his constant tendency to 
the autobiographical is the most interesting of his qualities. La Male Régle 
is a deliberate and frank self-confession, used as lengthy prelude to a begging- 
letter. The two-long tasks undertaken for Henry V and for Gloucester are each 
preluded by a lively piece of dialogue in explanation of their origin. In the one 
case it is a friend, in the other a wise old beggar, who receives Hoccleve’s laments 
over his muddled life and counsels him how to proceed. Where Lydgate would 
compose a prologue in imitation of Chaucer or in praise of the original he was 
translating, Hoccleve plunges awkwardly but vitally in another method. His 
dialogue is real dialogue, not alternating set speeches. He is limited enough 
in his handling; there is no setting for his two speakers, such as Chaucer or 
Henryson would have painted in; the voices, though lively in tone, are bodiless. 
And as soon as they cease, and the business of Jereslaus’ Wife or the Regement 
of Princes begins, Hoccleve drops into the stereotype of his period. In the 
prolonged didactics of the Regement of Princes there are several moments, how- 
ever, where the name of Chaucer breaks that spell of somnolence. Hoccleve goes 
out of his way to allude to his beloved master; and in one of these three short but 
deeply-feeling passages he says that he has had Chaucer’s likeness inserted, in 
order that men may not lose remembrance of him. A portrait of Chaucer does 
indeed appear at that point in a few MSS of the Regement, and is, with the 
Host’s teasing chaff in the headlink to Sir Thopas, our only real clue to Chaucer’s 
personal appearance. 

These mentions of Chaucer, the requests to a patron or superior for money, 
and the religious character of many of the shorter poems, are the lines on which 
Hoccleve and Lydgate can be compared as regards theme. And the student who 
puts Hoccleve’s begging-letters beside Lydgate’s pleas to Gloucester, Hoccleve’s 
language about Chaucer beside Lydgate’s far more numerous allusions, Hoccleve’s 
autobiographical disclosures beside Lydgate’s Testament, Hoccleve’s religious 
lyric beside Lydgate’s, will perceive two very different men. The trappings of 
convention lie much more heavily on Lydgate, who has no such restless urge to . 
talk of himself, no such human directness of approach to other human beings, 
as Hoccleve had. MHoccleve is always livelier and simpler than Lydgate; and 
when he speaks of Chaucer it is with a true affection and regret that have sweet- 
ened his own memory for the after-world. He has lived more really than has 


THOMAS HOCCLEVE 55 


Lydgate, and the mixture in him of piety and cheap raffishness makes him a more 
genuine creature. Saintsbury calls him a “crimeless Villon”; and it might repay 
a student to follow out the likenesses and differences between the Englishman 
and the Frenchman. In their piety the difference is very marked; for Hoccleve 
is as sincerely pious as is the monk Lydgate. He cannot indeed rise to as true 
a passion of love for Christ crucified as Lydgate sometimes can; but on the 
other hand, there are in the small bulk of Hoccleve’s verse no such depths of 
wordy inanity as too often occur in Lydgate’s religious poetry. We may plead for 
Lydgate the compulsion under which he worked, a compulsion from which Hoc- 
cleve was free. But the vacuity remains. 

On the technical side of the two men’s work there is also a marked difference. 
Both men were followers of Chaucer; and Hoccleve, who knew his master per- 
sonally, says that Chaucer “fayn wolde han me taght, But I was dul and lerned 
lite or naght.’’ His verse shows, indeed, less of Chaucer metrically than does the 
verse of Lydgate. Hoccleve manages pentameter badly, and is insensitive to the 
-weave of stressed and unstressed syllables, so long as their number is constant at 
ten. Very many lines run as do these: 


Pat me yeuest any othir than thee 

Of thy soule meekly to him confesse 
We sholde no meryt of our feith haue 
And as that the preest hir soules norice 215/212 
To the taast of your detestable errour 217 /293 


i:5/165 
i 
i 
i 
i 
Of the myghty Prince of famous honour 1:49 /3 
i 
i 
i 
i 
i 


711/94 
713/142 


Ageyn thorsday next & it nat delaye :66 /56 
And shoop me him to offende no more :67 /16 
Yit thy deeth gat of the feend the maistrie 268 /52 
On the crois was thy skin in to blood died :69 /68 
Pat our soules pat the feend waytith ay :71/126 


Lydgate, on the contrary, is aware of certain rhythmic variants in Chaucer, 
adopts them, and abuses them. The headless line and the line brokenbacked, 
or short an unaccented syllable at the verse-pause, are a staple with him. He 
could find the former at least in Chaucer, and may have built the latter by 
analogy: but their occurrence is infrequent in Hoccleve, so far as we can yet say. 
The repetition of a single line-type by Lydgate is as marked as is Hoccleve’s un- 
awareness of line-type. Neither man understood Chaucer’s rhythm, but they mis- 
understand very differently. 

They differ also in their management of the English language; and here the 
advantage is so much with Hoccleve that we can surmise why Chaucer should 
have attempted to teach him. Hoccleve has nothing of Lydgate’s uncontrollable 
verbosity. He does not jumble finite verbs and participles; he does not overwork 
the ablative absolute ; he does not leave long sequences of clauses wandering with- 
out a principal verb; he does not repeat himself; he uses the minimum of padding 
and of rime-formulae; he sees where he is going, in narrative, and goes there. 
_ His syntax-control and his feeling for dialogue show that he had some story- 

telling faculty; and probably Chaucer recognized it. Hoccleve can toss dialogue 

back and forth through a stanza in swift exchange, breaking the line or over- 
running it as he chooses; he does not move in monotonous half-lines or dilute 
into entire stanzas as does Lydgate. 


56 THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


But with this advantage over Lydgate in the normal movement of speech, 
in the more competent use of English for expression, there goes, in Hoccleve, a 
lack of the “high spots” that we can find in Lydgate. Despite Lydgate’s ver- 
bosity and tedium, there are more than a few strong lines in his work; see p. 81 
here. But from Hoccleve it is not possible to glean such. He does say of his 
reckless habits that for many years ““Excesse at borde hath leyd his knyf with 
me,” and that “Ther never yet stood wys man on my feet.” His lament for 
Chaucer is moving. But his sense-perceptions, his feeling for nature, his imagi- 
nation, are not developed even as much as are those of Lydgate. The few strik- 
ing bits that we can cite are autobiographical and personal. 

Nor does Hoccleve echo Chaucerian phrase to anything like the extent seen 
in Lydgate. This is partly, of course, because of his relative lack of the narration 
and description so definitely the business of Chaucer and of Lydgate. He alludes to 
the Wife of Bath in his Dialogue, line 694; and in a few passages he may de- 
rive from Chaucer rather than from Chaucer’s original; see the remark on a 
prudent workman’s method in Dialogue 638 ff., and cf. Troilus i:1065 ff.; or 
see the dictum in Dialogue 764-5, or the phrasing of the Regement of Princes 
629. But there is no such evidence of Chaucer’s power over Hoccleve’s memory 
as is clear for Lydgate, despite Hoccleve’s strong personal feeling for his master. 
This may be in some measure due to the resistance of a lively egoist, which Hoc- 
cleve undoubtedly was; for his citations of any sort are a separate element in his 
work. He follows copy and cites copy, in his translations, but it is distinct from 
his own trend of thought; and although the religious emotion of many of his 
independent poems is deep, he turns more naturally toward himself than toward 
literature. 

His choice of works to translate also shows a mind less literary than prac- 
tical and moralistic; and he had no body of patrons whose larger curiosity about 
books sent him afield in letters. His connection with Humphrey of Gloucester 
was slighter than was that of Lydgate. That some of Hoccleve’s work was 
popular we might argue from the number of copies of the Regement of Princes; 
but we must recollect that the subject was popular, by whomsoever treated, and 
that Hoccleve is not mentioned with Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate, by following 
generations. William Browne, in the seventeenth century, did indeed say of 
him :—‘‘There are few such swaines as he Now a dayes for harmony,’—but 
this critical judgment has not been endorsed by readers before or since. What 
recommends Hoccleve to us is his deep and genuine respect for Chaucer, the 
candid, even if contrite, relish with which he talks about himself, and his direct 
commonsense handling of his work. He has no “aureate language,” no rhetorical 
colors; he is too honest to delay his advance about his business by playing with 
words, and too clearheaded not to see the way to state that business. If Chaucer 
tried to teach Hoccleve to write, it was because Chaucer saw in Hoccleve the pos- 
sibilities which are still to be seen. In studying him we study some one who 
was very little of a writer, but a good deal of a man. 


THOMAS HOCCLEVE 57 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST AND BIBLIOGRAPHY III 


Manuscripts 
Of the Shorter Poems en masse: 
HM 111 of the Huntington Library, California, formerly Phillipps 8151. 
Described by L. Toulmin Smith in Anglia 5:20, and by G. Mason in his ed. 
of six poems from it in 1796. Contents printed EETS edition, vol. i, 1892. 
HM 744 of the same library, formerly Ashburnham Appendix cxxxiii. Contents, 
except Learn to Die, are printed EETS ed., ii, 1925. Its copy of the Legend 
of the Virgin was ed. for the Chaucer Soc. in 1902; see my Manual, p. 444. 
Durham Cathedral V iii,9. Texts printed EETS ed., vol. i. 
Egerton 615 of the Brit. Mus. Texts printed EETS ed., iii, 1897. 
Of Single Shorter Poems: 
The Letter of Cupid. 
Fairfax 16, Bodley 638, Tanner 346, Digby 181, Selden B 24, all of the 
Bodleian Library. In Univ. Libr. Cambr., Ff. i,6. In Durham Cathedral 
V ii, 13, a Troilus MS; this text is unpubd., uncollated, and unmentioned 
either by Skeat, vii: 217, or in my Manual, p. 434. In HM 744. A late 
copy is in the Bannatyne MS. The poem was once in Longleat 258; see 
my Manual, p. 434, and p. 103 here. 
The Mother of God. 
Selden B 24 of the Bodleian; HM 111 as above; Advocates Libr., Edin- 
burgh, 18, 2, 8. 
To Henry V, for money. 
Fairfax 16. Text of Phillipps 8151 is printed EETS i: 62. 
Of the “Series” of Linked Poems, i.e., Complaint, Dialogue, two Gesta Romanorum 
stories, Learn to Die. 
Bodley 221, of the Bodleian, has the Series, Lydgate’s Dance Macabre, and the 
Regement of Princes. Laud 735, of the same library, has the same poems. 
Selden supra 53, same library, has the Regement (impf.), Series, and Dance 
Macabre. 
The lost Coventry School MS (see my Manual, p. 354) contained the Regement, 
the Series, the Dance Macabre, etc. 
Digby 185, of the Bodl. Libr. has the Regement and the two tales from the 
Series. 
Royal 17 D vi, Brit. Mus., has the Regement and part of the Series. 
Bodl. Eng. poet. d 4 has fragments of the two Tales of the Series. 
The MS formerly Phillipps 8267 (present owner unknown) has fragments of 
the Complaint. 
Of the Regement of Princes (see also under “Series” above). 
Alone in the codex. 
Brit. Mus. Arundel 38, Harley 4866, Royal 17 C xiv, Royal 17 D xviii, Royal 17 
D xix, Sloane 1212, Sloane 1825.—Univ. Libr. Cambr. Gg vi, 17, Hh iv, 
11, Kk i, 3; Corp. Christi Coll. 496, Queen’s Coll. 12, St. John’s Coll. 223; 
McClean 185.—Bodl. Ashmole 40, Douce 158, Dugdale 45, Rawlinson poe- 
try 10; Rawl. poetry 168—Advocates Libr., Edinb., 19, 1, 11, and Edinburgh 
Univ. D. b. vi. 7—Lord Amherst’s MS, now owned by Wilfrid Merton of 
London. The Ashburnham (paper) MS, now owned by Quaritch. 


58 THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


With various other works, not by Hoccleve. 
3rit. Mus. Adds, 18632, Arundel 59, Phillipps 1099 (in hands of Rosenbach), 
Phillipps 8980, Trin. Coll. Cambr. R 3, 22. 
With various other works, not by Hoccleve. 
Brit. Mus. Harley 116, Harley 372, Harley 4826, Harley 7333 (dialogue only). 
Ellesmere 26 A 13, now Huntington (See JEGPh 9: 225 and MLNotes 25: 126). 
Soc. Antiquaries 134, McClean 182. 


In the Harvard University Library, MS Eng. 532 F, is the transcript made from Harley 
4866 (and Royal 17 D xix) by W. H. Black in 1843, in preparation for his 
projected Percy Society edition of the Regement, never carried out. 

A page of Brit. Mus. Adds 18622 is reprod. in Garnett and Gosse’s English Literature 
i, to face p. 190, and is wrongly marked as from the Siege of Thebes, in the 
same MS. It is from the Regement of Princes. 

A page of HM 744 (then Ashburnham MS) is reprod. EETS ed. i, to face page xxviii. 

A page of Durham V iii, 9 is reprod. EETS ed. i, to face p. 242. Jbid., p. xlix, Fur- 
nivall decides against either the Ashburnham, the Durham, or the Phillips as 
an Hoccleve autograph. See also Kern’s Verslagen as below, p. 372. 

A page of Durham V ii, 13 is reprod. by Root, The Manuscripts of Chaucer’s Troilus 
Chaucer Soc. 1914, to face p. 12; description on p. 11. The Troilus is however in 
a hand different from that of the Hoccleve poem. 

Brit. Mus. Adds. 24062, a collection of Privy Seal documents, is in Hoccleve’s hand. 


Editions 


The standard edition of Hoccleve is pubd. by the EETS in 3 vols., i (1892), ii (1925), 
iii (1897). Vol. iii, ed. by Gollancz, is of 40 pages, and gives most of the con- 
tents of the then Ashburnham-Gollancz MS, now HM 744, including the 3 
roundels already printed by Gollancz in Academy 1892 i: 542; the third of these 
is also printed EETS ed. i, page xxxviii foot. This vol. excludes the “Ash- 
burnham” copy of Learn to Die, because ‘fa good text” from the Durham MS 
is in 11:178. 

George Mason pubd. in 1796 a volume entitled “Poems by Thomas Hoccleve, never 
before printed.” These poems, six in number, were taken from the Askew- 
Phillipps MS, now Huntington 111, then in Mason’s possession. Mason’s texts 
were used by Morley and by Wiilker as below. 


The Letter of Cupid was printed with Chaucer’s works from 1532 to 1721; see my 
Manual p. 434. Urry’s 1721 text is repr. in Arber’s Engl. Garner iv: 54, in re- 
ed., iv: 13-31. The Fairfax MS text of the poem is printed EETS i:72 and 
Skeat vii: 217; the text of HM 744 is printed EETS ii: 20. 


The Mother of God was printed with Chaucer’s works from 1532 to 1866; see my 
Manual, p. 438. In EETS ed. it is printed 1:52, from the then Phillipps MS. 

The poem To the King—and the Knights of the Garter was printed with Chaucer’s 
works from 1532 to 1721; see my Manual, p. 459. It is printed EETS i: 41 and 
Skeat vii: 233 from HM 111, the former Phillipps MS. 


The tale of Jonathas, forming part of the “Series”, as above, was incorporated by 
William Browne into one of his Eclogues, and printed with his Shepheard’s Pipe 
in 1614, repr. in Hazlitt’s ed. of Browne, 1869. Browne in a note says that all 
Hoccleve’s works are “perfect in my hands.” He once owned MSS Durham 


THOMAS HOCCLEVE 59 


V ii, 15 and 16 (Lydgate), Durham V iii, 9 (Hoccleve), Ashmole 40 (the Rege- 
ment of Princes), Ashmole 46 (Lydgate), Brit. Mus. Adds. 34360, Lansdowne 
699, Stowe 952. 
The Regement of Princes, or De Regimine Principum, was printed by Thomas Wright, 
London, 1860, from Brit. Mus. Royal 17 D vi. It is in the EETS ed., vol. iii, 
from Harley 4866. An extract from the Laud text of the poem, stanzas 58-73, 
is printed by Furnivall in Queen Elizabeth’s Achademy, etc., EETS, pp. 105-8. 
The poem to the heretic Oldcastle, copied by R. James from an earlier text, was ed. 
by Grosart with James’ poems in 1880. It was printed from the then Phillips 
MS by L. Toulmin Smith in Anglia. 5:9-43; Furnivall in EETS ed: i, page 
xliii, notes four errors in her text. The poem is in EETS i:8, from HM 111. 
The story of the Virgin and her Sleeveless Garment was printed by the Chaucer Soc. 
1902; see my Manual, p. 444. The poem is printed EETS ii:15, divided by the 
editor into two parts. 
In JEGPh 8:260 MacCracken prints, from MS Univ. Libr. Cambr. Kk i, 6, a 
religious poem in ten eight-line stanzas for which he suggests Hoccleve’s authorship. 
Extracts from Hoccleve are in:— 
Ward’s English Poets, i:124-28.—Skeat’s Specimens of English Lit. 1394-1579, 
pp. 13-22—Wiilker’s Altengl. Lesbuch, ii: 47-56—Morley’s Shorter Engl. 
Poems, pp. 57-64.—Manly’s Engl. Poetry 1170-1892, p. 47.—Neilson and 
Webster’s Chief British Poets, 199-207. 


Studies 

Aster, Das verhaltnis des altengl. gedichtes De Regimine Principum von Th. Hoccleve 
zu seinen Quellen. Leipzig diss., 1888. 

Buchtenkirch, Der syntaktische gebrauch des infinitivs in Occleve’s De Regimine 
Principum. Jena diss., 1889. 

Vollmer, Sprache und Reime des Londoners Hoccleve, in Anglia 21: 201 (1898). 

Bock, Studien zu Th. Hoccleve’s Werken. Munich diss., 1900, pp. 68. 

Haecker, Stiluntersuchungen zu Th. Hoccleve’s poetischen Werken. Marburg diss., 
1914, pp. 104. 

J. H. Kern, Een en ander over Th. Hoccleve en zijn werken, Amsterdam, 1915; pp. 365- 
390 of Verslagen en Mededelingen der Koninkl. Akad. vy. Wetenschappen, reeks 
5, vol. i. 

——Zum texte einiger dichtungen Th. Hoccleve, in Anglia 39: 389-494 (1910). 

Hoccleve’s Verszeile, in Anglia 40: 367-9. 

——Date of Hoccleve’s Dialog, ibid., 370-73. 

Der Schreiber Offorde, ibid., 374. 

B. P. Kurtz, The Source of Hoccleve’s Lerne to Dye, in ModLangNotes 38 :337 (1923). 

——The Prose of Hoccleve’s Lerne to Dye, ibid., 39: 56. 

—The Relation of Hoccleve’s Lerne to Dye to its Source, in PMLA 40: 252-75. 

Hoccleve is discussed:—Warton-Hazlitt, Hist. Eng. Poetry, iii: 42-7—Morley’s Engl. 
Writers, vi, chap. 5—ten Brink’s Hist. Eng. Lit., ii: 212-220.—Jusserand’s Lit. 
Hist. Eng. People, i: 501-3—Courthope’s Hist. Eng. Poetry, i: 333-40—Cambr. 


Hist. Eng. Lit., ii, chap. 8—Garnett and Gosse’s Engl. Lit., i:192-94.—Saints- 
bury’s Eng. Prosody, i: 231-4. 








60 THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


To the comment upon Hoccleve’s verse in the EETS introd. add my paper 
in ModPhil 23:129 ff., on the Nine-Syllabled Pentameter Line in some 
Post-Chaucerian Manuscripts. 

Notes on Hoccleve’s Reg. Princes text are in MLReview 4: 235. 


The MS Huntington 111, formerly Phillipps 8151, was described by Lucy Toulmin 
Smith, Anglia 5:20-21, as a small octavo of 8% by 6% inches, containing 47 vellum 
leaves and bound in old dark leather stamped with the royal arms of England. It is 
said to have belonged to Prince Henry, son of James the First; since then, to Askew, 
G. Mason, Bishop Heber, and Sir Thomas Phillipps. It is a plain MS, with only two 
small colored initials, in a fifteenth-century hand but with headings in another and 
larger hand, probably contemporary. It contains 16 complete poems and a Complaint 
of the Virgin wrongly thrust in between two leaves of another poem; Tyrwhitt, whose 
letter to Mason is fastened inside the cover, suggests that this transfer was perhaps 
made to conceal the fact that the Complaint, once the first poem of the MS, is im- 
perfect at beginning. 

The codex is of careful and consistent orthography, and has some marks of punc- 
tuation which may be noted. These are of three sorts: the inverted semicolon, used 
apparently as a comma; the mark of interrogation, which is like ours but reversed; 
and a sign somewhat similar, but with a flattened curve and tipped very much down to 
the right. The first sign appears in Male Régle, end of line 17, in 319 after why; 
in 367 after stele; in To Carpenter, line 26, after is, and in To Bedford 14, 18, after | 
colours, mis. The second sign is in Male Régle 37, in To Somer 22. The third is in 
Male Régle 265 after A; Mason here printed Ah, Furnivall As. It is also in To 
Carpenter, end of line 24. 

For revision of the EETS texts of these poems with the MS I am indebted t 
the kindness of Capt. R. B. Haselden, Keeper of the Manuscripts in the Huntington 
Library, California. 


HOCCLEVE’S MALE REGLE 
[MS Huntington 111, fol. 16 verso] 
CY ENSUYT LA MALE REGLE DE T. HOCCLEUE 


1 Of ioie / and ful of seekly heuynesse 15 
O precious tresor inconparable Al poore of ese / & ryche of euel fare 
O ground & roote of prosperitee 3 
O excellent richesse commendable 


porien alk, Peiecane be If bt thy fauour twynne from a wight 


Smal is his ese / & greet is his greuance 


Who may susteene thyn aduersitee 5 : 
What wight may him avante of worldly aaa / is lyf / thyn hate sleeth doum 
welthe 


Who may compleyne thy disseuerance 20 
Bettre than I pt of myn ignorance 

Vn to seeknesse am knyt / thy mortel fo 
2 Now can I knowe feeste fro penaunce 
And whil I was wt thee / kowde I nat so 


But if he fully stande in grace of thee 
Eerthely god / piler of lyf / thow helthe 


Whil thy power / and excellent vigour 


As was plesant vn to thy worthynesse 
Regned in me / & was my gouernour 
Than was I wel / tho felte I no duresse 
Tho farsid was I with hertes gladnesse 
And now my body empty is & bare 


4 
My grief and bisy smert cotidian 25 
So me labouren & tormenten sore 
Pt what thow art now / wel remembre I 
can 


MALE REGLE 61 


And what fruyt is in keepynge of thy lore 

Had I thy power knowen or this yore 

As now thy fo conpellith me to knowe 30 

Nat sholde his lym han cleued to my gore 

For al his aart / ne han me broght thus 
lowe : 


But I haue herd men seye longe ago 

Prosperitee is blynd / & see ne may 

And verifie I can wel / it is so 

For I my self put haue it in assay 

Whan I was weel / kowde I considere 
it? nay 

But what / me longed aftir nouelrie 

As yeeres yonge yernen day by day 

And now my smert accusith my folie 40 


6 
Myn vnwar yowthe kneew nat what it 
wroghte 
This woot I wel / whan fro thee twynned 
shee 
But of hir ignorance hir self shee soghte 
And kneew nat bt shee dwellyng was wt 
thee 
For to a wight were it greet nycetee 45 
His lord or freend wityngly for toffende 
Lest pt the weighte of his aduersitee 
The fool oppresse / & make of him an 
ende ; 


From hennes foorth wole I do reuerence 

Vn to thy name / & holde of thee in 
cheef 50 

And werre make & sharp resistence 

Ageyn thy fo & myn pt cruel theef 

Pt vndir foote / me halt in mescheef 

So thow me to thy grace reconcyle 

O now thyn help / thy socour and 
releef 55 

And I for ay / mis reule wole exyle 


8 
But thy mercy excede myn offense 
The keene assautes of thyn aduersarie 
Me wole oppresse with hir violence 
No wondir / thogh thow be to me con- 


trarie 60 


My lustes blynde han causid thee to varie 

Fro me / thurgh my folie & inprudence 

Wherfore / I wrecche / curse may & 
warie 

The seed and fruyt of chyldly sapience 


9 
As for the more paart / youthe is rebel 
Vn to reson / & hatith hir doctryne 


Regnynge which /it may nat stande wel 
With yowthe / as fer as wit can ymagyne 
O yowthe / allas / why wilt thow nat 
enclyne 
And vn to reuled resoun bowe thee 70 
Syn resoun is the verray streighte lyne 
Pt ledith folk / vn to felicitee 
10 
Ful seelde is seen / pt yowthe takith 
heede 
Of perils pt been likly for to fall 
For haue he take a purpos / bt moot 
neede 75 
Been execut / no conseil wole he call 
His owne wit he deemeth best of all 
And foorth ther with / he renneth bry- 
dillees 
As he pt nat betwixt hony and gall 
Can iuge / ne the werre fro the pees 80 


11 

All othir mennes wittes he despisith 
They answeren no thyng to his entente 
His rakil wit only to him souffysith 

His hy presumpcioun nat list consente 
To doon as pt Salomon wroot & mente 85 
Pt redde men by conseil for to werke 
Now youthe now / thow sore shalt 

repente 
Thy lightlees wittes dull of reson derke 


12 
My freendes seiden vn to me ful ofte 
My mis reule me cause wolde a fit 90 
And redden me in esy wyse & softe 
A lyte and lyte to withdrawen it 
But pt nat mighte synke in to my wit 
So was the lust y rootid in myn herte 
And now I am so rype vn to my pit 
Pt scarsely I may it nat asterte 


13 
Who so cleer yen hath & can nat see 
Ful smal of ye auaillith the office / 
4 Right so / syn reson youen is to me 
For to discerne a vertu from a vice 100 
If I nat can with resoun me cheuice 
But wilfully fro reson me withdrawe 
Thogh I of hire haue no benefice 
No wondir / ne no fauour in hir lawe 
14 
Reson me bad / & redde as for the 
beste 
To ete and drynke in tyme attemprely 
But wilful youthe nat obeie leste 
Vn to pt reed / ne sette nat ther by 
I take haue of hem bothe outrageously 


62 THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


And out of tyme / nat two yeer or 
three LTO 

But xxti wyntir past continuelly 

Excesse at borde hath leyd his knyf wt 
me 


15 


The custume of my repleet abstinence 
My greedy mowth Receite of swich out- 


rage 
And hondes two / as woot my negli- 
gence 115 


Thus han me gyded / & broght in seruage 
Of hire pt werreieth eucry age 
Seeknesse y meene riotoures whippe 
Habundantly bt paieth me my wage 

So bt me neithir daunce list ne skippe 


16 


The outward signe of Bachus & his lure 
Pt at his dore hangith day by day / 

Excitith folk / to taaste of his moisture 
So often / pt man can nat wel seyn nay 
For me I seye / I was enclyned ay 125 
With outen daunger thidir for to hye me 
But if swich charge / vp on my bak lay 
That I moot it forbere / as for a tyme 


17 


Or but I were nakidly bystad 

By force of the penylees maladie 130 
For thanne in herte kowde I nat be glad 
Ne lust had noon to Bachus hows to hie 
Fy lak of coyn / departith conpaignie 
And heuy purs with herte liberal 
Quenchith the thristy hete of hertes 


drie 135 
Wher chynchy herte / hath ther of but 
smal 
18 


I dar nat telle / how pt the fressh repeir 
Of venus femel lusty children deere 
Pt so goodly / so shaply were & feir 
And so plesant of port & of maneere 740 
And feede cowden al a world wt cheere 
And of atyr passyngly wel byseye 
At Poules heed me maden ofte appeere 
To talke of mirthe / & to disporte & 
pleye 
19 
Ther was sweet wyn ynow thurgh out the 
hous 145 
And wafres thikke / for this conpaignie 
pt I spak of / been sumwhat likerous 
Where as they mowe a draght of wyn 
espie 


Sweete / and in wirkynge hoot for the 


maistrie 
To warme a stomak wt / ther of they 
dranke 150 


To suffre hem paie had been no courtesie 
That charge I took / to wynne loue & 
thanke 


20 


Of loues aart / yit touchid I no deel 
I cowde nat / & eek it was no neede 
Had I a kus / I was content ful weel 
Bettre than I wolde han be wt the deede 
Ther on can I but smal it is no dreede 
Whan pt men speke of it in my presence 
For shame I wexe as reed as is the gleede 
Now wole I torne ageyn to my sen- 
tence 160 


21 


Of him pt hauntith tauerne of custume 

At shorte wordes / the profyt is this 

In double wyse / his bagge it shal con- 
sume 

And make his tonge speke of folk amis 

For in the cuppe / seelden fownden 
is 165 

pt any wight his neigheburgh com- 
mendith 

Beholde & see / what auantage is his 

Pt god / his freend / & eek him self 
offendith 


22 


But oon auantage / in this cas I haue 

I was so ferd / with any man to 
fighte 170 

Cloos kepte I me / no man durste I 
depraue 

But rownyngly / I spak no thyng on 
highte 

And yit my wil was good / if pt I 
mighte 

For lettynge of my manly cowardyse 

Pt ay of strokes impressid the wighte 17 

So pt I durste medlen in no wyse 


23 


Wher was a gretter maister eek than y 

Or bet aqweyntid at Westmynstre yate 

Among the taverneres namely 

And Cookes / whan I cam / eerly or 
late 180 

I pynchid nat at hem in myn acate 

But paied hem / as pt they axe wolde 

Wherfore I was the welcomere algate 

And for a verray gentil man y holde 


MALE REGLE 63 


24 

And if it happid on the Someres day 
Pt I thus at the tauerne hadde be 
Whan I departe sholde / & go my way 
Hoom to the priuee seel / so wowed me 
Hete & vnlust and superfluitee 
To walke vn to the brigge / & take a 

boot 190 
Pt nat durste I contrarie hem all three 
But dide as pt they stired me / god woot 


25 


And in the wyntir / for the way was 
deep 

Vn to the brigge I dressid me also 

And ther the bootmen took vp on me 
keep 195 

For they my riot kneewen fern ago 

Wt hem I was | tugged to and fro 

So wel was him / pt I wt wolde fare 

For riot paieth largely / eueremo 

He styntith neuere / til his purs be 
bare 200 

26 

Othir than maistir / callid was I neuere 

Among this meynee in myn audience 

Me thoghte / I was y maad a man for 
euere 

So tikelid me pt nyce reuerence 

Pt it me made larger of despense 205 

Than pt I thoghte han been / o flaterie 

The guyse of thy traiterous diligence 

Is folk to mescheef haasten / & to hie 


27 

Al be it bt my yeeres be but yonge , 
Yit haue I seen in folk of hy degree 
How pt the venym of faueles tonge 
Hath mortified hir prosperitee 
And broght hem in so sharp aduersitee 
Pt it hir lyf hath also throwe a doun 
And yit ther can no man in this con- 

tree 215 
Vnnethe eschue this confusioun 


28 
Many a seruant / yn to his lord seith 
Pt al the world spekith of him honour 
Whan the contrarie of bt / is sooth in 
feith 
And lightly leeued is this losengeour 220 
His hony wordes / wrappid in errour 
Blyndly conceyued been / the more harm 
is 
O thow fauele of lesynges Auctour 
Causist al day / thy lord to fare amis 


/ 


29 
Tho combreworldes clept been enchan- 
tours 22 
In bookes / as pt I haue or this red 
That is to seye sotil deceyuou(r)s 
By whom the peple is mis gyed & led 
And with plesance so fostred and fed 
Pt they forgete hem self & can nat 
feele 230 
The soothe of the condicion in hem bred 
No more / than hir wit were in hire 
heele 
30 


Who so pt list in the booke of nature 

Of beestes rede / ther in he may see 

If he take heede vn to the scripture 

Where it spekth of meermaides in the See 

How pt so inly mirie syngith shee 

Pt the shipman ther with fallith a sleepe 

And by hire aftir deuoured is he 

From al swich song is good men hem to 
keepe 240 

31 

Right so the feyned wordes of plesance 

Annoyen aftir / thogh they plese a tyme 

To hem pt been vnwyse of gouernance 

Lordes beeth waar / Let nat fauel yow 
lyme 

If pt yee been enuolupid in cryme 245 

Yee may nat deeme / men speke of yow 
weel 

Thogh fauel peynte hir tale in prose or 


ryme 

Ful holsum is it / truste hire nat a deel 
32 

Holcote seith vp on the booke also 

Of sapience / as it can testifie 250 


Whan pt Vlixes saillid to and fro 
By meermaides / this was his policie 
All eres of men of his compaignie 
With wex he stoppe leet / for pt they 
noght 
Hir song sholde heere / lest the armonye 
Hem mighte vn to swich deedly sleep han 
broght 
33 
And bond him self / vn to the shippes 
mast 
Lo thus hem all saued his prudence 
The wys man is of peril sore agast 
O flaterie o lurkyng pestilence 260 
If sum man dide his cure & diligence 
To stoppe his eres fro thy poesie 


64 THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


And nat wolde herkne a word of thy 
sentence 
Vn to his greef it were a remedie 


34 
A nay / al thogh thy tonge were ago 
Yit canst thow glose in contenance & 
cheere 

Thow supportist with lookes eueremo 
Thy lordes wordes in eche mateere 

Al thogh pt they a myte be to deere 

And thus thy gyse is priuee and ap- 


pert 270 

With word and look / among our lordes 
heere 

Preferred be / thogh ther be no dissert 

35 

But whan the sobre / treewe & weel 
auysid 

Wt sad visage his lord enfourmeth 
pleyn 


How pt his gouernance is despysid 
Among the peple / & seith him as they 
seyn 
As man treewe oghte vn to his souereyn 
Conseillynge him amende his gouernance 
The lordes herte swellith for desdeyn 
And bit him voide blyue with mes- 
chaunce 280 
36 
Men setten nat by trouthe now adayes 
Men loue it nat / men wole it nat cherice 
And yit is trouthe best at all assayes 
Whan pt fals fauel soustenour of vice 
Nat wite shal how hire to cheuyce 285 
Ful boldely shal trouthe hir heed vp bere 
Lordes lest fauel / yow fro wele tryce 
No lenger souffre hire nestlen in your ere 


Oo”, 

{Be as be may / no more of this as now 
But to my mis reule wole I refeere 
Wher as I was at ese weel ynow 
Or excesse vn to me leef was & deere 
And or I kneew his ernestful maneere 
My purs of coyn had resonable wone 
But now ther in can ther but scant ap- 

peere 295 
Excesse hath ny exyled hem echone 


38 
The feend and excesse been conuertible 
As enditith to me my fantasie 
This is my skile / if it be admittible 
Excesse of mete & drynke is glotonye 300 
Glotonye awakith malencolie 


Malencolie engendrith werre & stryf 
Stryf causith mortel hurt thurgh hir folie 
Thus may excesse reue a soule hir lyf 


39 

{No force of al this / go we now to 

wacche 305 
By nightirtale / out of al mesure 
For as in pt / fynde kowde I no macche 
In al the priuee seel with me to endure 
And to the cuppe ay took I heede & cure 
For pt the drynke appall sholde noght 
But whan the pot emptid was of moisture 
To wake aftirward/cam nat in my thoght 


40 

But whan the cuppe had thus my neede 
sped 

And sumdel more than necessitee 

With repleet spirit wente I to my bed 315 

And bathid ther in superfluitee 

But on the morn / was wight of no 
degree 

So looth as I / to twynne fro my cowche 

By aght I woot / abyde / let me see 

Of two / as looth / I am seur kowde I 
towche 320 

41 

I dar nat seyn Prentys and Arondel 

Me countrefete & in swich wach go ny 
me 

But often they hir bed louen so wel 

Pt of the day / it drawith ny the pryme 

Or they ryse vp / nat tell I can the 
tyme 325 

Whan they to bedde goon / it is so late 

O helthe lord / thow seest hem in pt 
cryme 

And yit thee looth is / wt hem to debate 


42 


And why I not / it sit nat vn to me 

Pt mirour am of riot & excesse 330 

To knowen of a goddes pryuetee 

But thus I imagyne / and thus I gesse 

Thow meeued art of tendre gentillesse 

Hem to forbere / and wilt hem nat chas- 
tyse 

For they in mirthe and vertuous glad- 
nesse 335 

Lordes reconforten in sundry wyse 


43 


But to my purpos / syn bt my seeknesse 
As wel of purs as body hath refreyned 
Me fro Tauerne / & othir wantonnesse 


MALE REGLE 65 


Among an heep / my name is now des- 
teyned 340 

My greuous hurt ful litil is conpleyned 

But they the lak compleyne of my des- 
pense 

Allas bt euere knyt I was and cheyned 

To excesse / or him dide obedience 


44 


Despenses large enhaunce a mannes 
loos 345 

Whil they endure / & whan they be for- 
bore 

His name is deed / men keepe hir 
mowthes cloos 

As nat a peny had he spent tofore 

My thank is qweynt / my purs his stuf 
hath lore 

And my Carkeis repleet with heuy- 
nesse 350 

Be waar Hoccleue / I rede thee therfore 

And to a mene reule/thow thee dresse 


45 


Who so passynge mesure desyrith 

As pt witnessen olde Clerkes wyse 

Him self encombrith often sythe & 
myrith 355 

And for thy let the mene thee souffyse 

If swich a conceit in thyn herte ryse 

As thy profyt may hyndre or thy renoun 

If it were execut in any wyse 

With manly resoun thriste thow it doun 


46 


Thy rentes annuel / as thow wel woost 
To scarse been greet costes to susteene 
And in thy cofre pardee is cold roost 
And of thy manuel labour as I weene 
Thy lucre is swich / pt it vnnethe is 
seene 365 
Ne felt / of yiftes seye I eek the same 
And stele for the guerdoun is so keene 
Ne. darst thow nat / ne begge also for 
shame 


47 


Than wolde it seeme / bt thow borwid 
haast 

Mochil of bt bt thow haast thus de- 
spent 370 

In outrage & excesse and verray waast 

Auyse thee / for what thyng pt is lent 

Of verray right / moot hoom ageyn be 
sent 

Thow ther in haast no perpetuitee 


Thy dettes paie / lest pt thow be 
shent 
And or pt thow ther to compellid be 


48 


Sum folk in this cas dreeden more offense 
Of man / for wyly wrenches of the lawe 
Than he dooth eithir god or conscience 

For by hem two he settith nat (an) 


hawe 380 
If thy conceit be swich / thow it with- 
drawe 


I rede / and voide it clene out of thyn 
herte 
And first of god and syn of man haue 


awe 

Lest bt they bothe / make thee to smerte 
49 

Now lat this smert warnynge to thee 

be 385 


And if thow maist heere aftir be releeued 

Of body and purs / so thow gye thee 

By wit / bt thow / no more thus be 
greeued 

What riot is / thow taasted haast and 
preeued 

The fyr / men seyn / he dreedith pt is 
brent 390 

And if thow so do / thow art wel 
ymeeued 

Be now no lenger fool / by myn assent 


50 


Ey / what is me / pt to my self thus 
longe 

Clappid haue I / I trowe pt I raue 

A / nay / my poore purs / and peynes 
stronge 395 

Han artid me speke as I spoken haue 

Who so him shapith mercy for to craue 

His lesson moot recorde in sundry wyse 

And whil my breeth may in my body waue 

To recorde it / vnnethe I may souffyse 


51 


§O god o helthe vn to thyn ordenance 
Weleful lord / meekly submitte I me 
I am contryt / & of ful repentance 
Pt euere I swymmed in swich nycetee 
As was displesaunt to thy deitee 405 
Now kythe on me thy mercy & thy grace 
It sit a god been of his grace free 
Foryeue / & neuere wole I eft trespace 


66 THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


52 


My body and purs been at ones seeke 

And for hem bothe / I to thyn hy 
noblesse 

As humblely as pt I can byseeke 

Wt herte vnfeyned / reewe on our dis- 
tresse 

Pitee haue of myn harmful heuynesse 

Releeue the repentant in disese 

Despende on me a drope of thy 
largesse 415 

Right in this wyse/if it thee lyke & plese 


53 


‘Lo lat my lord the Fourneval I preye 
My noble lord / bt now is tresoreer 
From thyn Hynesse haue a tokne or 


tweye 
To paie me pt due is for this yeer 420 
Of my yeerly .x.li. in theschequeer 


Nat but for Michel terme bt was last 
I dar nat speke a word of ferneyeer 
So is my spirit symple and sore agast 


54 


I kepte nat to be seen inportune 425 
In my pursuyte / I am ther to ful looth 
And yit bt gyse / ryf is and commune 


Among the peple now withouten ooth 
As the shamelees crauowr wole / it gooth 
For estaat real / can nat al day werne 
But poore shamefast man ofte is wroth 
Wherfore for to craue moot I lerne 


55 


‘The prouerbe is / the doumb man no lond 
getith 

Who so nat spekith / & with neede is bete 

And thurgh arghnesse / his owne self 
forgetith 435 

No wondir / thogh an othir him forgete 

Neede hath no lawe / as bt the Clerkes 
trete 

And thus to craue / artith me my neede 

And right wole eek pt I me entremete 

For pt I axe is due / as god me 
speede 440 

56 


And pt that due is / thy magnificence 
Shameth to werne / as pt I byleeue 

As I seide / reewe on myn impotence 
Dt likly am to sterue yit or eeue 

But if thow in this wyse me releeue 445 
By coyn I gete may swich medecyne 

As may myn hurtes all pt me greeue 
Exyle cleene / & voide me of pyne 


[TO SOMER] 


[From the same MS, fol. 38 verso] 


CESTES BALADE & CHANCEON ENSUYANTES FEURENT FAITES A MON MEISTRE .H. 
SOMER QUANT IL ESTOIT SOU3TRESORER 


The Sonne wt his bemes of brightnesse 

To man so kyndly is & norisshynge 

Pt lakkyng it / day nere but dirknesse 

To day he yeueth his enlumynynge 

And causith al fruyt for to wexe & 
sprynge 5 

Now syn pt sonne may so moche auaill 

And moost with Somer is his soiournynge 

That sesoun bou(n)teuous we wole assaill 


2 
Glad cheerid Somer / to your gouernaill 
And grace / we submitte al our willynge 
To whom yee freendly been / he may nat 
faill 
But he shall haue his resonable axynge 
Aftir your good lust be the sesonynge 


421. Marginal gloss: annus ille fuit annus restric- 
tions annuitatium. 


Of our fruytes / this laste Mighelmesse 
The tyme of yeer was of our seed 

ynnynge I5 
The lak of which / is our greet heuynesse 


3 


We truste vp on your freendly gentillesse 
Yee wole vs helpe / and been our sup- 
poaill 
Now yeue vs cause ageyn this cristemesse 
For to be glad / o lord / whethir our 
taill 20 
Shal soone make vs with our shippes saill 
To port salut? if yow list / we may synge 
And elles moot vs bothe mourne & waill 
Til your fauour vs sende releeuynge 


4 
We your seruantes Hoccleue & Baillay 25 
Hethe & Offorde yow beseeche & preye 


TO CARPENTER 67 


Haasteth our heruest / as soone as yee 
may 

For fere of stormes / our wit is aweye 

Were our seed Inned / wel we mighten 
pleye 

And vs desporte / & synge / & make 
game 

And yit this rowndel shul we synge & 
seye 

In trust of yow / & honour of your name 


Somer pt rypest mannes sustenance 


With holsum hete of the Sonnes warm- 
nesse 
Al kynde of man thee holden is to blesse 


Ay thankid be thy freendly gouernance 
And thy fressh looke of mirthe & of 
gladnesse 
Somer &c. 
To heuy folke / of thee the remem- 
braunce 
Is salue & oynement to hir seeknesse 
For why we thus shul synge in Christe- 
messe 
Somer &c. 


[TO CARPENTER] 
[From the same MS, fol. 41] 


See heer my maister Carpenter I yow 
preye 

How many chalenges ageyn me be 

And I may nat deliure hem by no weye 

So me werreyeth coynes scarsetee 

That ny Cousin is to necessitee 5 

For why vn to yow seeke I for refut 

Which pt of comfort am ny destitut 


2 
Tho men / whos names I aboue expresse 
Fayn wolden pt they and I euene were 
And so wolde I / god take I to wit- 
nesse 0 
I woot wel I moot heere / or elles where 
Rekne of my dettes / & of hem answere 
Myn herte for the dreede of god & awe 
Fayn wolde it qwyte / & for constreynt 
of lawe 
Just above is, in margin, A de B & C de D, &c. 
See Notes. 


6. Marginal gloss: Ceste balade feust tendrement 
considere & bonement execute. 


3 
But by my trouthe / nat wole it betyde 15 
And therfore as faire as I can & may 
With aspen herte / I preye hem abyde 
And me respyte / to sum lenger day 
Some of hem grante / and some of hem 
seyn nay 
And I so sore ay dreede an aftir clap 20 
That it me reueth many a sleep & nap 


4 
If pt it lykid / vn to your goodnesse 
To be betwixt (hem) and me swich a 
mene 
As pt I mighte kept be fro duresse 
Myn heuy thoghtes wolde it voide 


clene 25 
As your good plesance is this thyng 
demene 


How wel pt yee doon / & how soone also 
I suffre may in qwenchynge of my wo 


Cest tout 


68 


THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


[THREE ROUNDELS] 
[MS Huntington 744] 


CY ENSUENT TROIS CHAUNCEONS yi LUNE CONPLEYNANTE A LA DAME MONNOIE & LAUTRE 
LA RESPONSE DELE A CELLUI QUI SE CONPLEYNT & LA TIERCE i LA 
COMMENDACION DE MA DAME 


I 
[ Compleynt] 

Wel may I pleyne on yow lady moneye 
Pt in the prison of your sharp scantnesse 
Souffren me bathe in wo and heuynesse 
And deynen nat of socour me purueye 
Whan pt I baar of your prison the keye 
Kepte I yow streite Nay God to witnesse 

Well may I 
I leet yow out / O now of your noblesse 
Seeth vn to me / in your deffaute I deye 

Well may I 
Yee saillen al to fer retowrne I preye 
Conforteth me ageyn this Cristemesse 
Elles I moot in right a feynt gladnesse 
Synge of yow thus & yow accuse & seye 

Well may I 


Ii 


II 
[La Response] 


Hoccleue / I wole / it to thee knowen be 
I lady moneie/of the world goddesse 
Pt haue al thyng vndir my buxumnesse 
Nat sette by thy pleynte risshes three 


Myn hy might haddest thow in no cheertee 
Whyle I was in thy slipir sikirnesse 
Hoccleue 
At instance of thyn excessif largesse 
Becam I of my body delauee 
Hoccleue 
And syn pt lordis grete obeien me 
Sholde I me dreede / of thy poor sym- 
plesse 
My golden heed akith for thy lewdnesse 
Go poore wrecche / who settith aght by 
thee 
Hoccleue 


Cest tout 


[La Commendacion de ma Dame] 
Of my lady wel me reioise I may 
Hir golden forheed is ful narw & smal 
Hir browes been lyk to dym reed coral 
And as the Ieet / hir yen glistren ay 


Hir bowgy cheekes been as softe as clay 
Wth large lowes and substancial 


Of my lady 


Hir nose / a pentice is pt it ne shal 
Reyne in her mowth / bogh shee vp 


rightes lay 
Of 


Hir mowth is nothyng scant / wt lippes 


gray 


Hir chin vnnethe / may be seen at al 

Hir comly body / shape as a foot bal 

And shee syngith / ful lyk a papelay 
Of 


Cest tout 


DIALOGUE WITH A FRIEND 69 


HOCCLEVE’S DIALOGUE WITH A FRIEND 
[EXTRACT | 


The partially-linked set of poems and prose moralizations by Hoccleve, 
which I for convenience call a “Series,” opens with a Complaint in soliloquy, of 
413 lines rime royal; with it is connected a following Dialogue, of 826 lines in 
the same stanza, which introduces the tale of Jereslaus’ Wife, from the Gesta 
Romanorum, of 952 lines similarly grouped. On this follow four stanzas of 
dialogue, and the prose moralization of the Tale which Hoccleve’s friend therein 
demands. Earlier, in the Dialogue itself, the friend who is counseling Hoccleve 
learns from him that he is pledged to execute a piece of work for the duke of 
Gloucester, which is long overdue; the friend suggests something lighter than 
Hoccleve had had in mind, something to appease women, who have been angered 
by Hoccleve’s translation of the Letter of Cupid. An ‘Innocent Persecuted 
Wife” story is accordingly told by the poet, a story closely allied to Chaucer’s 
tale of Constance; but the rendition of “Learn to Die” which next follows (with- 
out connection) in the MSS of the “Series,” may be the work originally planned 
for Gloucester. It, and a prose comment, are bound by another bit of dialogue 
with the same friend to a second narrative translated from the Gesta Romanorum, 
also with appended moralization ; this closes the “Series.” 

Our extract is taken from the second link of the “Series,” the Dialogue: 
it opens with Hoccleve’s protest, in two stanzas, that he is quite capable of re- 
suming composition after his long illness, and has no intention of overworking 
himself as his friend fears. The friend has the next three stanzas and two lines 
more; Hoccleve replies, and not only stanzas but lines are occasionally divided 
between the two in the animated dialogue which follows. A similar dialogue- 
method of introducing his work is employed by Hoccleve as preface to the Rege- 
ment of Princes. The student will observe here the careful use of Thomas and 
of freend by the different speakers, for clearness. 

The MS from which I print, Selden supra 53 of the Bodleian Library at 
Oxford, is described p. 124 here. 


Freend I not medle of materis greete 
Ther to not strecche may myn intellecte 
I neuere yit was brent with studies 
hete 500 
Let no man holde me therynne suspecte 
If I not ligtly / may cacche the effecte 
Of thing in wiche / laboure I me purpose 
A deu my studie / anoon my book I close 


By stirtis / whanne that a fresshe lust me 
taketh 

Wole I me bisie now and now a lite 

But whanne my lust dulleth & aslaketh 

I stinte wole / and no lenger write 

And parde frende / that may not hindre a 
mite 

As that it semeth to my symple avis 570 

Iugeth youre silfe / ye bene prudent & 
wys 


Siker Thomas / if thou do in suche wise 
As thou seist / I am ful wel content 
That thou vppon the take that emprise 
Wiche that thou hast purposid and y ment 
Un to that ende geue I myn assent 

Goo thou ther to / in ihesu cristis name 
And as thou hast me seide/do thou the 

same 


I am sure that thi disposicioun 

Is suche / that thou maist more take on 
honde 520 

Than I first wende in myn opinioun 

In many foold / thankid be geddis sonde 

Do forth in goddis name / and not ne 
wonde 

To make and write / what thing that 
thee list 

That I not er knewe / is nowe to me wist 


70 THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


And of 00 thing / nowe wel I me remem- 
bre 

Whi thou purposist in this book trauaile 

I trowe that in the moneth of Septembre 

Nowe last or not fer from it / it is no 
faile 

No force of the time / it shal not 
auaile 530 

To my matere / ne hindre or lette 

Thou seidest / of a book thou were in 
dette 


Vn to my lorde / that nowe is lieutenant 
Mi lorde of Gloucestre / was it not so 
Yis sothly freend / and as by couenant 
He shulde han had it many a day a go 
But seeknesse and vnlust / and othir mo 
Han bene the causis of impediment 
Thomas / thanne this book hast thou to 
him ment 


Siker freend ye ful trewe is youre 
demynge 540 

ffor him it is / that I this book shal make 

As blyue as that I herde of his comynge 

ffro ffrance / I penne and ynke gan to 
take 

And my spirit I maade to a wake 

That longe lurkid hath in ydelnesse 

ffor any suche labour and besinesse 


But of some othir thing / fain trete I 
wolde 

Mi noble lordis herte / ther with to 
glade 

And therto deepe I bounden am and 
holde 

On suche mater / by him that me 
made 550 

Wolde I bistowe many a balade 

Wiste I what / good freend / telle on 
what is best 

Me for to make / and folowe am I prest 


Next oure lege lorde oure kyng victori- 
ous 

In al this wide worlde / lorde is ther 
noone 

Vn to me so good ne so gracious 

And hath bene suche / yeeris ful manie 
oone 

God yelde it him / as sad as any stoone 

His herte is sette / and not chaunge can 

ffro me his humble seruant and his 
man 560 


For him I thougte han _ translatid 
( Vegece) 
Wiche tretith of the art of Chiualrie 
But I see his Knygthod so encresce 
That no thing my labour shulde edifie 
ffor he that art / wel can for the maistrie 
Bygonde he preued hath his worthinesse 
And amonge other / Chirburgh to wit- 
nesse 


This worthi Prince laie bifore that holde 
Wiche was ful stronge at sege many 
aday 
And thens for to departe hath he not 
wolde 570 
But knygtly there abood / vppon his pray 
Til he by force it wan / it is no nay 
Duke herry that so worthy was and good 
ffolowith this Prince / as wel in dede as 
blood 


Or he to Chirborwe cam / in iourneiing 
Of Costantin he wan the cloos and yle 
ffor wich / laud and honour & bi preis- 
ing 
Rewarden him / and quiten him his wyle 
Thoug he biforn that had a worthi stile 
Yit of noble rennoun is that encrees 580 
He is a famous Prince / and that is doute- 
lees 


For to reherce or telle in special 

Euery act that his swerde / in steel wroot 
there 

And many a nother place / I woot not al 

And thoug euery act come had to myn 
eere 585 

To expresse hem / my spirit wolde han 
fere 

Lest I his thanke par chaunce migt 
abregge 

Thorug vnkunnynge / if I hem shulde 
alegge 


But this I seie / he called is Humfrey 

Conueniently as that it semeth me 590 

ffor this conceit is in myn herte alweie 

Batallous Mars / in his natiuite 

Vn to that name / of verrey specialte 

Titlid him / makinge him ther by prom- 
esse 

That strecche he shulde un to hie 
prowesse 


DIALOGUE WITH A FRIEND 71 


For humfrey / as vn to myn intellect 
Man make I shal / in englissh is to seie 
And that biheest / hath taken trewe effect 
As the comune fame / can biwreie 
Who so his worthi knygthod / can 
weie 600 
Duely in hise conceitis balaunce 
Ynowe hath / whereof his rennoun en- 
haunce 


To cronicle hise actis / were a good dede 
ffor thei ensaumple migt and encorage 
fful many a man / for to taken hede 
How for to gouerne hem in the vsage 
Of armes / it is a greet auauntage 

A man bifore him / to haue a mirrour 
Therynne to see the path vn to honour 


O lorde / whanne he cam to the seege of 


Roon 610 
ffro Chirborwe / whether fere or coward- 
ise 


So ny the wallis / made him for to goon 

Of the town / as he dide I not suffice 

To telle yow / in howe knygtly a wise 

He loggid him there / and how worthily 

He bar him / what / he is al knygt 
sothly 


Nowe good frende / shoue at the cart I 
yow preie 


What thing may I make vn to his 
plesaunce 

With outen youre reede / noot I what to 
seie 


O / no parde Thomas / 0 no ascaunce 620 

No certein freend / as nowe no cheuis- 
aunce 

Can I youre counseil is to me holsum 

As I truste in yow ministrith me sum 


Wel Thomas / trowest thou his hie 
noblesse 

Not rekke / what mater that it be 

That thou shalt make of no freend as I 
gesse 

So that it be mater of honeste 

Thomas and thanne I wole avise me 

ffor who so reed and counseil geue shal 

May not on heed / forthe renne ther with 
al 630 


And that to so noble a Prince namely 
So excellent / worthy and honourable 
Shal haue / nedith good a vise sothly 
That it may be plesaunt and agreable 
To his noblesse / it is not couenable 
To write to a prince so famous 
But it be good mater and vertuous 
\ 


Thow woost wel / who shal an hous 
edifie 

Gooth not ther to with oute avisement 

If he be wys for with his mental ye 640 

first is it seen / purposid / cast and 
ment 

Howe it shal wrougt be / ellis al is shent 

Certis for defaute of good forsigte 

Mis tiden thingis / that wel bitiden migte 


This may be vn to thee / in thi makinge 

A good mirrour / thou wilt not haste I 
trowe 

Vn to thy penne / and ther with wirche 
heedlinge 

Or thou avised be wel / and wel knowe 

What thow shalt write / o Thomas / 
manie a throwe 

Smertith the fool / for lak of good a 
vis 650 

But no wigt hath it smerted that is wys 


For wel is he ware / or he write or 
speke 

What is to do or leue / Who by prudence 

Rule him shal / no thing shal oute from 
him breke 

Hastily ne of rakel necligence 655 

ffreend that is soth / o / nowe youre 
assistence 

And helpe / what I shal make I yow 
biseche 

In youre wys conceit / serche ye and 
seche 


He a long while in a studie stood 
And aftir warde thus he tolde his 
entente 660 
Thomas saaf bettre avis I holde it good 
Sithin howe the hooly sesoun is of lente 
In wiche it sitt euery wigt him repente 
Of his offence / and of his wickidnesse / 
Be heuy of thi gilte / and thee confesse 


72 THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


And satisfaccioun do thou for it 

Thou woost wel / on wymmen greet wite 
& lak 

Ofte hast thou putt / bi war / lest thou 
be quit 

Thy wordis fille wolde a quarter sak 

That thou in white / depeintid hast with 


blak 670 
In her repreef mochel thing hast thou 
wrete 


Wiche thei not forgeue haue / ne forgete 


Sumwhat nowe write in honour & preis- 
ing 

Of hem / so maist thow do correccioun 

Somdel of thin offence and mys heering 

Thou art clene oute of hir affeccioun 

Nowe sithen it is in thin eleccioun 

Whether thee list / her loue a gein pur- 
chace 

Or stonde as thou dost / oute of loue 
and grace 


Be wys rede I / chese the bettir part 680 

Triste wel this / wymen ben fel and wise 

Hem for to plese / lith greet craft and 
art 

Wher no fir made is / may no smoke 
arise 

But thou hast ofte / if thou the wel avise 

Made smoky brondis / and for al that 
gilt 

Yit maist thou stonde in grace / if thou 
wilt 


Bi buxum herte and bi submissiouz 

To her graces / yelding the coupable / 
Thou pardoun maist haue and remiscioum 
And do vn to hem plesaunce greable 690 
To make partie / art thou no thing able 
Humble thi goost / be not sturdy of herte 
Bettir than thou art / han thei made to 

smerte 


The wyf of Bathe take I for auctrice 

That wymmen han no ioie ne deinte 

That men shulde vppon hem putte any 
vice 

I woot wel so / or like to that seith she 

By wordis writen / Thomas yelde the 

Euene as thou by scripture hast hem 
offendid 

Rigt so / lat it be by writyng amendid 700 


Freend / thoug I do so / what lust or 
pleisir 

Shal my lorde therynne haue / noon / 
thinkith me 

Yis Thomas yis / his lust and his desir 

Is / as it wel sit / to his hie degre 

ffor his disporte / and mirthe in honeste 

With ladies / for to haue daliaunce 

And this booke / wole he hem shewen 
par chaunce 


And sithen he thi good lorde is / he be 
may 

ffor thee suche a meene / that the ligtlyere 

Shullen thei forgeue the / putte it in 


assay 710 
My counseil / let see / not shal it thee 
dere 


So wolde I do / if in thi plite I were 

Leie hand on thi brest / if thou wilt so 
do 

Or leue / I can no more seie ther to 


But thoug to wymmen thou thin herte 
bowe 

Axinge her graces / with greet repen- 
tauce 

ffor thi giltees / thee wole I not alowe 

To take on thee suche rule and gouer- 
nauzce 

As thei thee reede wolde / for greuaunce 

So greet / ther folowe migt of it par 


cas 720 
That thou repente it shuldist evcre 
Thomas 


Adam bigilid was thorug Eues reed 

And siker so was she by the Serpent 

To whom god seide / this womman thin 
heed 

Breke shal / for thorug thin enticement 

She hath y broke my comaundement 

O sithen womman had on the fende suche 
migt 

To breke a mannes heed / it semeth ligt 


For why let noon housbonde / thinke it 
shame 

Ne repreef vn to hym / ne vilenye 730 

That his wijf dooth to him that selue same 

Hir resoun axith haue of men the mais- 
trie 

Thoug hooly writ witnesse it and testifie 

Man shulde of hem hane dominacioun 

It is the reuers in probacioun 


i 
aed 


DIALOGUE WITH A FRIEND 73 


Hange vp his hachet / and sette him 
adoun 

ffor wonumen wole assente in no manere 

Vn to that pointe / ne that conclusioun 

Thomas / howe is it bitwixe the and thi 


fere 

Wel wel quod I / what list you ther of 
to here 740 

My wyf mygt hoker haue and greet dis- 
dein 

If I shulde in suche caas / pleie a solein 


Nowe Thomas / if thou list to lyue in 
ese 

Prolle aftir wymmens beneuolence 

Thoug it be daungerous / good is hem 
plese 

ffor harde is / to renne in her offence 

What so thei seien / take al in pacience 

Bettir art thou not / than thi fadris bifore 

Han ben Thomas / be rigt wel ware 
therfore 


Freende harde it is / wymmen to greue 
I graunte 750 
But what haue I a gilte / for him that 
dide 
Not haue I doon why / dar ye me auaunte 
Oute of wymmens gracis slippe or slide 
Yis Thomas yis / in the epistle of Cupide 
Thou hast of hem / so largely said 
That thei ben blak wrooth / and ful yuel 
apaid 


Freend / douteles sumwhat is ther in 

That sowneth but rigt smal to her 
honour 

But as to that / nowe for youre fadir 
kyn 

Considre / I was thereof noon auc- 
tour 760 

I nas in that caas / but a reportour 

Of folkes tales / and that they seide / 
I wrote 

I not affermed it on hem / god it woote 


Who so that shal reherse a mannes sawe 
As that he seith / moot he seie & not 
varie 
ffor and he do / he dooth a gein the lawe 
Of trouthe / he may tho wordis not 
: contrarie 
ho so that seith I am her Aduersarie 
And dispreise her condiciouns and port 


ffor that I made of hem suche re- 
port / 770 


He mis avisid is / and eke to blame 

Whanne I it spak / I spake conpleiningly 

I to hem thougte no repreef ne shame 

What worlde is this / howe vndirstande 
am I 

Loke in the same book / what stiketh by 

Who so loketh aright / therynne may 
thei see 

That they me ougte haue in greet chirtee 


And ellis / woot I not what is what 
The book concludith for hem / it is no 


nay 
Vertuously / my good frende / dooth it 
nat 780 


Thomas I not / for yit I neuere it say 

No freend no Thomas / Wel trowe I in 
fay 

ffor had ye red it fully to the ende 

Ye wolde seie / it is not as ye wende 


Thomas / howe so it be / do as I seide 
Sithen it displesith hem / amendis make 
If that some of hem thee ther of vpbreide 
Thou shalt be besie y now I vndirtake 
Thi kut to kepe / and nowe | thee bitake 
To god / for I moot nedis fro the 
wende 790 
The loue and thanke of wymmen / nowe 
god the sende 


Amonge I thenke thee for to visite 

Or that thi book fully finisshid be 

ffor looth me were / thou shuldist ougt 
write 

Wher thorug / thou migtest gete any 
mawgree 

And for that cause / I wole it ouer see 

And Thomas / nowe a dieu and fare 
weel 

Thou finde me shalt / 
steel 


al so trewe as 


Whane he was goon / I in myn herte 
dredde 

To stonde oute of wymmens beneuol- 
ence 800 

And to fulfille that / that he me redde 

I shope me to do my peine and diligence 

To wynne hir loue by obedience 

Thoug I my wordis can not wel por- 
treie / 


74 THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


Lo here the forme / howe I hem obeie 


My ladies alle / as wisly god me blesse 

Why that ye meued bene / can I not 
knowe 

My gilte cam neuere yit to his ripenesse 

Al thoug ye for youre foo / me deeme 


& trowe 
But I youre frende be / bite me the 
crowe 810 


I am al othir to yow / than ye wene 
By my writing / hath it and shal be sene 


But netheles / I lowly me submitte 

To youre bountees / as fer as thei han 
place 

In yow / vn to me wrecche it may wel 
sitte 


To axe pardoun / thoug I not trespace 

Leuer is me / with pitous chere and 
face 

And meek spirit do so / than open werre 

Ye make me / and me putte at the werre 


A tale eke / wiche I in the Roman 
dedis 820 

Nowe late sy / in honur & plesaunce 

Of yow my ladies / as I moot nedis 

Or take my way / for fere in to ffrance 

Thoug I not shapen be / to prike and 
praunce 

Wole I translate / and that my gilte I 
hope 

Shal pourge / as clene / as keuer- 
chiefs dooth sope 


[IN PRAISE OF CHAUCER] 


[Stanzas from the Regement of Princes, from the copy executed for Henry Prince of 
Wales, MS Arundel 38 of the British Museum. This volume has on fol. 37, at opening of the 
poem after the introduction, a miniature of the poet presenting his work to Henry. The leaf 
which probably carried the miniature of Chaucer, with lines 4990-5042, has been removed from 


the manuscript. | 


[MS Arundel 38, fol. 35b-36] 


Wyth hert as tremblyng as the leef of asp 

ffadir syn 3e me rede do so 

Of my simple conceyt wol I the clasp 

Vn do / And lat yt at his large go 

But welaway / so ys myn hert wo 

That the honour of englyssch tong is 
deed 

Of which / I wont was han consail & 
reed 1960 


© mayster dere and fadir reuerent 

My mayster Chaucer flour of eloquence 

Mirrour of fructuous endendement 

© vniuersel fader in science 

Allas that thou thyn excellent prudence 

In thy bed mortel mightyst nort by 
quethe 

What eiled deth Allas why wolde he 
slethe 


Variants of Brit. Mus. Adds. 18632 (Ad) and 
Harley 4866 (H) are: 1954 herte tremblyng 
(Ad); 1955 rede to do so (HAd); 1957 and 
at his large lat hit goo (Ad); 1958 herte (HAd); 
1959 tonge (HAd); 1963 entendement (HAd); 
1964 of science (Ad); 1966 This MS errs: not 
(Ad), naght (H); 1967 sle the (HAd); 1971 
His name . . . astertith (HAd); 1978 haast ment 
(H); 1980 no more seye (Ad). 

The MS formerly Phillipps 1099 reads in 1963 
endytement, in 1980 no bettir seye. 


O deth thou dedyst nou3t harm synguleer 

In slaghtree of hym / but al ps land yt 
smertith 

But natheles 3yt hastow no power 1970 

He name sle / hys hye vertu astertyth 

Vnslayn fro the / whych ay vs lyfly 
hertyth 

Wyth bokes of hys ornat endytyng 

That ys to al thys land enlumynyng. 


Hastow nou3t eeke my mayster Gower 
slayn 

Whos vertu I am in sufficient 

ffor to descryue. I woot wel in certayn 

ffor to sleen al thys world thou hast I 
ment 

But syn our lord cryst was obedient 

To the in feyth. I can no  ferther 
seye 1980 

Hys creatures mosten the obeye 


Symple as my goost and scars my let- 
terure 2073 

Vn to 3our excellente for to write 

Myn inward loue / and 3it aventure 

Wil I me putte thogh I can but lyte 

My dere mayster god ys soul quyte 

And fadir Chaucer rayn wolde han me 
taght 


PRAISE OF CHAUCER 75 


But I was dul . and lerned lyte or naght 
Alas my worthy mayster honorable 2080 
Thys landes verray tresour and rychesse 
Deth by thy deth harme irriparable 

Vn to vs don. her vengeable duresse 
Despoyled hath this land of the swet- 

nesse 
Of rethorik / for vn to tullius 
Was neuer man so lyk a monges vs 


Also who was hier in philosophye 

To aristotle / in our tonge but bu 
The steppes of virgile in poesie 
Thow filwedist eek wot wel I now 2090 
‘That combre world pt pee my mayster 

slow 

Wolde I slayn were / deth was to hastyf 
To renne on the and reue the py (l)yf 


Deth hath but smal consideracion 

Vn to the vertuous I haue espyed / 

No more as schewyth the probacion 

Than to a vycyous mayster losel tried 

A mong an heep / every man ys mays- 
tried 

Wyth her as wel the poore as ys be ryche 

Leered and lewde eek standen al I 
leche 2100 


Sche my3tte han taried hir vengeance a 
while 


Variants of Adds. 18632 and Harley 4866 are: 
2073 Simple is (HAd); 2074 excellence (HAd); 
2075 yit in auenture (HAd); 2077 soule (HAd); 
2082 deth / hath harme (HAd); 2088 tonge ban 
thow (Ad)—note Ad’s understanding of hier, 
2087, as “‘higher’’, not as “‘heir’’; 2090 men wite 
wel (Ad); 2093 first letter of Iwf is erased; 2104 
MS reads brange; 2106 for the beste (Ad). 

The scribe has made several corrections during 
transcription. 

‘The former Phillipps 1099 reads: 2073 scars is 
my; 2079 yong and lerne lyte; 2096 a scheweth 
probacton; 2099 as the riche; 2100 eek ben unto 
hyre lyche; 2104 lyke brynge forth to the; 2106 
as for the beste. 


Til that sum man had egal to be be 

Nay lat be pat / she knewe wel pt bys Ile 

May neuere man forth bringe lyk to pe 

And hyre office nedes do moot sche 

God bad hire soo / I truste as for thi 
beste 

O maister maister / god py soule reste 


[MS Brit. Mus. Adds. 18632, fol. 93b] 
The firste foundere of oure faire lang- 
age 4978 
hap seid in caas.semblable.and ober mo 
so hily wel. that hit is my dotage 
for to expresse . or touche ony of tho 
allas my fader. is fro be world go 
my worbi maister Chaucer. him I mene 
be pov aduoket for him . heuenes quene 


As bov wel knowest . o . blessed vir- 
gine 4985 

wt louinge herte . and hie deuocioun 

in bin honour . he wrot ful many a lyne 

o . nov pin help . and thin promocioun 

to god pi sone . make a mocioun 

hov he pi seruaunt was. maiden marie 

and lat his loue . floure and fructifie 


Al bouh his lyf be quent. be resemblaunt 
of him hap in me .so fressh liflinesse 
that to putte other men. in remembraunce 
of his persone. I haue here his likinesse 
do make to this ende. in sothfastnesse 
that thei bt han of him lost bouht & 

mynde 4997 
bi bis peinture may. agein him fynde 


Variant readings of Harley 4866 and of the remain- 
ing lines of Arundel 38 are: 4978 finder, fyndere 
(AdH); 4982 fro the world ys goo (AdH); 
4991 queynt (H); 4992 resemblaunce (H); 4995 
lyknesse (H); 4997 lest pought (H). 

The former MS Phillipps 1099 reads: 4978 of 
your faire; 4985 And thou; 4991 love; 4997 lost. 


76 THOMAS HOCCLEVE 


[TO BEDFORD] 
[MS Huntington 111, fol. 37] 


CE FEUST MYS EN LE LIURE DE MONSR JOHAN LORS NOMEZ w ORE REGENT 
DE FRANCE & DUC DE BEDFORD 


Vn to the rial egles excellence 

I humble Clerc with al hertes hum- 
blesse 

This book presente / & of your reuerence 

Byseeche I pardon and foryeuenesse 

Pt of myn ignorance & lewdenesse 5 

Nat haue I write it in so goodly wyse 

As pt me oght vn to your worthynesse 

Myn yen / hath custumed bysynesse 

So daswed / pt I may no bet souffyse 


2 
I dreede lest pt my maister Massy 10 
Pt is of fructuous intelligence 
Whan he beholdith how vnconnyngly 
My book is metrid / how raw my sent- 
ence 
How feeble eek been my colours his 
prudence 


Shal sore encombrid been of my folie 75 
But yit truste I / pt his beneuolence 
Compleyne wole myn insipience 
Secreetly / & what is mis rectifie 


5 
Thow book / by licence of my lordes 
grace 
To thee speke I / and this I to thee 
seye 20 
I charge thee / to shewe thow thy face 
Beforn my seid Maister / & to him preye 
On my behalue / pt he peise and weye 
What myn entente is bt I speke in thee 
For rethorik hath hid fro me the keye 25 
Of his tresor / nat deyneth hir nobleye 
Dele with noon so ignorant as me 


Cest tout 


JOHN LYDGATE 


John Lydgate, the “Monk of Bury,’ whose life was bounded by the years 
°1375 and 1448-9, is an apt example of that mutability of fortune which he and 
his contemporaries loved to dwell upon, of a reputation in his own day which 
has now faded as completely as has that of Cowley. He was born in the village 
of Lydgate, near the great Benedictine abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk; he 
became as a lad a novice within its walls, and passed on through subdiaconate 
and diaconate to the priesthood in 1397. In 1421 he was made prior of Hatfield 
Broadoak, Essex, but after eleven years he relinquished that office and, so far 
as we know, returned to Bury. The last we hear of him through official docu- 
ments is a receipt on his behalf for his semi-annual pension from the Crown, 
dated Sept. 1449; and in the 27th year of Henry VI, 1448-9, he is spoken of as 
dead by the versifier John Metham. 

The tradition set on foot by Bale, that Lydgate studied at both Universities 
and traveled extensively abroad, has never received any corroborative proof. 
He seems to have been in France when the translation of the Dance Macabre 
was suggested to him; and headings by Shirley to some of the shorter poems 
state that they were composed in Oxford or in London; but there is no evidence 
that he did the bulk of his verse-production elsewhere than in his monastery. 
And if the most of his years were passed at Bury, it was in no secluded back- 
water of life that he dwelt. The seat of the Abbey was one of the larger towns 
of England. In Lydgate’s lifetime and in that of Chaucer, London had between 
forty and fifty thousand inhabitants, while very few other towns numbered more 
than ten thousand; most of the English people dwelt in hamlets of three hundred 
or less. Bury, with its four thousand population, was an important place; and 
the frequent disputes of Town and Gown in the period show that it was by 
no means dominated by its great Benedictine House. Life there was not perhaps 
at the tension of life in London, but the town was no sleepy nook of silence ; and 
literature also had its vicarious experience to offer to a monk of Bury. The 
Abbey Library was one of England’s largest book-collections. John Boston of 
Bury, Lydgate’s contemporary and fellow-monk, travelled all over England in- 
vestigating and cataloguing monastic libraries; and none in his list was better 
stocked than that of Bury itself, with its two thousand or more volumes of both 
sacred and profane literature. Had Lydgate chosen, he could have studied there 
not only Cicero and Seneca, but Horace and Juvenal, Virgil, Statius, Plautus, 
and Terence. . 

Neither life nor letters, however, could yield to Lydgate quite the same 
opportunity as to Chaucer. The pressure of the monastic habit of thought, the 
monastic routine, lay heavy on a cloistered monk; and had Lydgate ever possessed 
the keen sensibilities with which Chaucer came to books, they must have been 
deadened by the amount of work which he did to order. He probably showed, in 
early manhood, a glibness with words and with rime which made him conspicu- 
ous in his monastery; one commission followed another, and his facile “eloquence” 
was soon in steady demand for any occasion requiring verses. A mumming by 
London merchants before the Lord Mayor, a “letter” to accompany Christmas 
gifts to the king, an explanation of the Mass for a pious Countess to keep in her 
chamber, a set of stanzas to serve up with the “subtlety” at a banquet, a com- 


[77 } 


78 JOHN LYDGATE 


plaint for a lovesick squire to offer his lady, the “histories” to accompany figures 
in a fresco or in tapestry, either for a graveyard or for a wealthy mercer’s parlor, 
a colossal translation of Boccaccio’s “tragedies” for the Duke of Gloucester,— 
are examples of the monk’s varied commissions. 

He has left a good many thousand lines of brief poems, religious and secular ; 
but his larger pieces of work were the mainstay of his reputation for genera- 
tions; and most of these were translations done to order. For Henry V, while 
still Prince of Wales, Lydgate translated the Troy Book, a rewriting, in 30,000 
pentameter couplet lines, of the Trojan story, drawn apparently from Guido delle 
Colonne. This was begun in 1412 and finished in 1420, according to its own 
statements; and it was probably preceded by another work for the same prince, 
the Life of Our Lady, 6,000 lines long, in sevens. The Earl of Salisbury com- 
missioned from Lydgate a translation of Deguilleville’s Pélerinage de la Vie 
Humaine, which Lydgate tells us was begun in 1426, and which runs to 25,000 
lines, mainly short couplets. The poet’s Guy of Warwick was done at the request 
of Margaret Lady Talbot, daughter of thel Earl of Warwick; it is less ponder- 
ous,—of 592 lines only. Lady Talbot’s father, Richard de Beauchamp Earl of 
Warwick, while Lieutenant-General of France after the death of Henry V, or- 
dered of Lydgate, in 1426, a translation setting forth the hereditary right of 
Henry VI to the French crown,—329 lines in pentameter couplets. For presenta- 
tion to the youthful king, and at the command of Curteys, abbot of Bury, Lydgate 
wrote, in 1433, the Lives of SS. Edmund and Fremund, 3,700 lines rime royal. 
Later, in 1439, the abbot of St. Albans requested of Lydgate a life of SS. Albon 
and Amphabell, which runs to 4,700 lines, in sevens. And the heaviest of Lyd- 
gate’s undertakings, the 36,000 lines of the Fall of Princes, translated from 
Laurent de Premierfait’s second prose version of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum 
Illustrium, was executed between 1431 and 1438 for Humphrey duke of Glou- 
cester, brother of Henry V, first founder of the library of the University of Ox- 
ford, and Maecenas of his time. 

Nor do these commissioned and datable poems exhaust the list of Lyd- 
gate’s longer works. A translation from the French, entitled Reason and Sen- 
suality, is dated conjecturally about 1408; it is of 7,000 lines in short couplets, 
unfinished. The Churl and the Bird, also from the French, may date even -earlier. 
The Dance Macabre, another translation from the French, must postdate the exe- 
cution of the wall-painting (1424) in Paris whence Lydgate says he took it; it 
is of almost 700 lines, in stanza. A tale supplementary to the Canterbury Tales, 
the Siege of Thebes, 4,700 lines in pentameter couplets, was perhaps written 
between 1420 and 1422. The poet’s Testament, written presumably late in 
life, is of 900 lines in stanza; and according to a note in the manuscripts, his 
death occurred while he was engaged upon a version of the so-called advice of 
Aristotle, to Alexander, the Secreta Secretorum, of which Lydgate did about 
1,500 lines in sevens, his follower Burgh(?) continuing the work. 

To these ca.120,000 lines of well-authenticated verse we must add the 
mass of the shorter poems; and here we are on less certain ground. The list of 
Lydgate’s works drawn up by Ritson (see below p. 99) has been denounced by 
Schick and dissected by MacCracken; but from its fault of method, its tendency 
to add to the Lydgatian canon any piece of fifteenth-century verse didactic in 
content, accurate in rime, and jerkily ambling in rhythm, we are not yet free. 
The collection of the monk’s minor poems made by J. O. Halliwell in 1840 assigned 
to Lydgate work marked as his by any manuscript, or even appearing without 


JOHN LYDGATE 79 


author’s name in a volume including some Lydgatian poems. No classification 
of MS-authorities according to their probable trustworthiness has yet been made, 
and no canon of Lydgate has been drawn up in which there is separation be- 
tween the poems claimed by Lydgate in his text, the poems mentioned as his 
by contemporaries, the poems assigned to him by trustworthy scribes, and the 
poems without any external evidence as to authorship. The list of his writings 
in the Dictionary of National Biography is entirely uncritical, and the canon as 
endorsed by MacCracken, in: his EETS edition of the Minor Poems, vol. i, is 
marred by the addition of a number of poems unmarked in any MS and accepted 
solely by Dr. MacCracken’s personal judgment. 

Relying first upon the few manuscripts written by Lydgate’s contempor- 
ary, John Shirley, manuscripts very fully marked with authors’ names—and 
upon one codex, Harley 2255 of the British Museum, which may have been com- 
piled for Lydgate’s own abbot, we can add to the canon of the monk’s works 
some 15,000 lines of minor poems.!_ In few cases is it possible to date them. 
The Departing of Chaucer is probably of 1417; the epithalamium to the Duke 
of Gloucester is of 1422; the Coronation address to Henry VI must be of 1429; 
and the two mummings in honor of Estfeld’s London mayoralty are of 1429 
or 1437. But we can only conjecture as to the dates of the remaining mum- 
mings or of the tapestry poems, while for the prayers, the hymns, and the didac- 
tic verse we have no criterion other than internal, than the better or worse 

handling of rhythm and subject. 

: This standard is difficult of application to Lydgate. The student who 
had never read a line of his work might suspect, upon hearing of its enormous 
amount, that its quality was strained. It is indeed. And with Lydgate the 
period of life at which he writes has less to do with his power of expression 
than has his subject. The Testament may have been of his later years, but it 
contains fine stanzas of deep religious feeling, notably that praised by Churton 
Collins, in which Christ addresses the sinner thus: 


* John Shirley, several of whose commonplace-books remain to us (see p. 192 here), not only 
transcribed a mass of poems by Chaucer and by Lydgate, but wrote for many of his copies full 
“gossippy” headings, from which we draw some curious particulars. A Shirley volume in 
the library of Trinity College, Cambridge (R, 3, 20), has 60 entries; nine of these are by 
Chaucer and one by Hoccleve, five mention no author (although another Shirley MS ascribes 
two of them to Lydgate), nine are in Latin or French, eight are mere bits, such as proverbs 
or recipes, and 28 are marked as by Lydgate. This collection includes his six mummings, 
which are preserved nowhere else, two tapestry poems, two personal poems addressed to 
Gloucester, and the Coronation Address to Henry VI; the rest are religious and didactic,— 
4500 lines in all. A Shirley codex in the British Museum, Adds. 16165, has 23 entries, of 
which eight are there assigned to Lydgate, including the Temple of Glass, the Black Knight, 
the Departing of Chaucer, and a New Year’s poem; the total is 2600 lines, or 3200 if we 
accept the complaint appended to the Temple of Glass, the genuineness of which is doubted 
by Prof. Schick, the EETS editor of the poem. Another Shirley volume, Bodl. Ashmole 59, 
besides reproducing ten of the entries made in the Cambridge and in the London codices, and 
copying as separate poems four extracts from longer works, adds to the above list 14 poems,— 
1480 lines. Four of these latter are also contained in MS Harley 2255 of the British Museum. 
If the tiny coat of arms in its initial means that this codex was written for William 
Curteys, abbot of Bury during the last twenty years of Lydgate’s life (on which point see 
Anglia 28:24), then the authority of its ascriptions is high. The number of its entries marked 
as by Lydgate is 24, four of which are already in our list; among the others are the Fabula 
Duorum Mercatorum, the Letter to Gloucester, the legend of St. Austin at Compton, and 
the Testament. Most of its contents are religious, and the number of lines assigned to 
Lydgate is 5800. 


80 JOHN LYDGATE 


Tarye no longer toward thyn herytage 

Hast on thy weye and be of ryght good chere 
Go eche day onward on thy pylgrymage 
Thynke howe short tyme thou shalt abyden here 
Thy place is byggyd aboue the sterres clere 
Noon erthly palys wrought in so statly wyse 
Kome on my frend my brother most entere 

For the I offred my blood in sacryfyce 


Yet other late verse by Lydgate, such as the Secrees, has no value; and other 
religious verse by him, when done to order, as St. Albon was done to order, 
can drop to a very low level, not so low as Guy of Warwick, but weakly mo- 
notonous. In Lydgate’s many and respectful allusions to Chaucer he pleases us; 
but when he attempts to imitate the Prologue he makes a lamentable failure. 
If the Flower of Courtesy be his (for which we have only the word of the editor 
of the 1561 Chaucer) he was capable of grace and sweetness of expression on a 
hackneyed subject; but his epithalamium to Gloucester is a wooden piece of 
work. His sunrises and spring settings were not unjustly praised by Warton: 
compare the picture of Spring in Reson and Sensuality 101 ff., and many pas- 
sages in the Troy Book (e. g. i: 1197 ff., 1271 ff., 3094 ff., 3907 ff. etc.), pic- 
tures much better and more detailed than the monk permits himself in the Fall 
of Princes (cf. v: 1506-11 there). In this respect, as in others, the Troy Book 
is the most successful of Lydgate’s longer works; in vivacity, in self-expression, 
in knowledge of life, it is much superior to the Siege of Thebes, although it be 
a commissioned task and a translation. If a religious emotion be absent, and if 
Lydgate lacks the restraint of a compact stanzaic original, such as he had for 
the Dance Macabre, he easily wanders; the slender substance of his meaning 
dries into the sands of his fluency, and he blunders among words, unable to 
advance to a goal which he does not clearly see. He spoils Canace’s lament 
by a tasteless allusion to Cupid as causer of the tragedy; he cannot let Paris 
relate his dream, in Priam’s family council, without a pedantic explanation of 
the attributes of Mercury. He can no more deny himself a digression, espe- 
cially a didactic one, than could Browning; but it is not Browning’s pressure of 
bounding vitality, like that of a dog quartering a new countryside, which drives 
Lydgate to utterance; it is a sort of “total recall,” the inability to stop until a 
whole series of familiar and related phrases have been not only reeled off, but 
‘repeated. This verbosity, when joined to a lack of structural sense, is disas- 
trous; and Lydgate had little or no structural sense. He had no notion of the 
-value of brevity, of selection among details. Indeed, his proclaimed theory is 
to the contrary. He says, in the prologue to the Fall of Princes, lines 92, 93, that 
a story “constrained under wordes fewe’’ is no story; see page 158 here. But 
Chaucer’s view is the more truly psychological; cf. the Squire’s Tale lines 
393 ff. :— 

The knotte, why that every tale is told, 

If it be taried til that lust be cold 

Of hem that han it after herkned yore, 

The savour passeth ever lenger the more, 

For fulsomenesse of his prolixitee. 


The remark of Gosse, that Lydgate appears better in selections than in wholes, 
means of course that the monk’s inability to conceive of structure, to treat any 


JOHN LYDGATE 81 


part of his work with reference to any other part, or to get from one episode or 
mood to another, is disguised by the process of selection. No writer is at once 
‘so slow and so breathless as Lydgate; his discourse advances at a crawl, with 
constant returns upon itself, but marks time with such volubility that the reader 
is bewildered. 

It is indeed possible to collect some handfuls of good verses from the many 
thousand lines which Lydgate has left, mainly from the Troy Book and the 
Fall of Princes. For instance :-— 


And saue be eye atwen was no message 
DuorMerc 54 is less striking. 
Solitarie in captiuite 
For many fader schal his sone se 
Hol in be morwe pat schal be slawe or eve 
Lat vs with swerde & nat with wordis fight 
Pe swerde of rancour may nat alwey bite 
—pbe fomy wawes wyde 
Pat to sight whelmen vp so grene 
And al be eyr with schot of arowis kene 
Ischadwed was pat Phebus bemys bright 
Vp on pe soille was dirked of his light 
Aforn his swerd Grekis go to wrak 
Cf. 11:7272, iii:1470-71 
Of noyse of hors be erpe gan to tremble 
Or be heuene be clustred and depeynt 
With brighte sterris in be Euenynge 
See Chaucer’s Boece iv, metr. 1, 23-4. 
Liche as be goddis wolde haue take wrak 
And had of newe assentid ben in oon 
Pe londe to drenche of Deucalyon 
From the Latin of Guido. 
With swiche colour as men go to her graue 
See Troilus iv :862-3. 
Furiously walkynge vp and doun 
And alweye fix on hir he hadde his loke 
See Knight’s Tale 1949. 


And verray wery of his owne lyf 


See FaPrinces i:3774, iii:2825, Thebes 2518. 


When be hote mery somers day 
No dwery is but like a geant longe 


Nat Cleopatra goyng to her graue 


For euery wo by processe muste aswage 
See ii1:458, 4086, etc. 


Liche be sonne bat shynep in be reyn 
Pes in be face but in be herte werre 
Ther was al merthe ther was al melodie 
Al worldli welthe shal fadyn as a rose 


God hath a thousand handes to chastise (etc. ) 
From Laurent’s French. 


Troy Book ii :3718 
Troy Book ii :3906 
Troy Book ii :4204-5 
Troy Book ii :4381 
Troy Book ii :7028 
Troy Book 11 :8036-7 
Troy Book ii :8106-8 
Troy Book i1 :8493 
Troy Book iii :1562 


Troy Book iii :2680-1 


Troy Book iii :3294-6 
Troy Book iii :4185 


Troy Book iii :5143 
Troy Book iv :608 


Troy Book iv :2386 


Troy Book iv :3390-1 
Troy Book iv :3658 
Troy Book iv :3702 


Troy Book iv :5224 
Troy Book iv :6132 
FaPrinces i: :593 
FaPrinces i :942 
FaPrinces i :1331 ff 


82 JOHN LYDGATE 


She may be troublid but ouercome neuere FaPrinces i:1366 
On to the deth he felte his herte colde FaPrinces i :4480 
Cf. Chaucer, MLTale 781, etc., Troy Book i:2050, 
iii :4546, v:3123, etc. 


Fame in her paleis hath trumpes mo than oon FaPrinces i:5111 

Oon bet the bussh another hath the sparwe FaPrinces i:5127 

The sterrid heuene is thi couerture FaPrinces i:6161 

Go foorth my soule peur & inmortal FaPrinces ii :1310 
From Coluccio’s Latin, see ModPhil 25:56. 

Now heer now ther as botis hom to londe FaPrinces iii :1321 

Sum drope of pite lat in thyn herte fleete FaPrinces iii :2040 

For comparisouns doon ofte gret greuaunce FaPrinces iii :2188 
See HorseGooseSheep 526. 

The wise war the circumspect goddesse FaPrinces iii :4237 

Vnder that dirked and cloudi orizonte FaPrinces iii :4345 

Al for the werre & nothyng for the pees FaPrinces iv :1817 
See Troy Book ii:3319. 

Than gaff he sentence & theron he abood FaPrinces v :455 

Thi secre bosum is ful of stories FaPrinces vi :309 
In Laurent, “ton giron qui est tresgarny des hystoires.” 

In Phebus presence sterris lese her liht FaPrinces vi :2983 
See note on FaPrinces G 36 here. 

The faire day men do praise at eue FaPrinces ix :2024 


See ModLangNotes 36:115-18. 


These are sufficiently striking. But it is to be remembered, first, that most 
rimesters can show a good line or two; John Hamilton Reynolds or Leigh Hunt 
has occasionally a verse or a bit of observation which reminds us that they 
were indeed contemporaries and friends of Keats. And secondly, these ex- 
tracts or twice their number make hardly a ripple in the ocean of Lydgate’s - 
140,000 and more lines, lines not only thin in substance but clogged with 
formulae. We dredge up such a bit as Achilles’ plaint of his love for Polyxena, 
Troy Book iv: 707-8,— 


Or how shal I ben hardy to apere 
In the presence of hir eyen clere,— 


and it is an excellence. In the text, however, it immediately follows, 


For how shuld I be bold to haue repaire 
Or dorn, allas, comen in hir sight. 


That is, Lydgate’s habit of repetition is constant, his power of expression easily 
overborne; and the linking of the happier couplet to the weaker injures the 
effect of the whole. The monk’s habit of padding, too, is injurious. He has 
memory and appreciation enough to quote his great master; but when we find 
“For pitee renneth sone in gentil herte” appearing in the form 


For pite, who that kan aduerte, 
Renneth sone in gentyl herte,— ResonandSens 6915-6 


JOHN LYDGATE 83 


we recognize not only the merit of the attempt at citation, but the clumsiness of 
the formula which splits it.1 And similarly with the monk’s allusions to nature. 
They are often apparently fortunate; but we cannot with certainty praise, e.g., 
his feeling for the lark, and add to our list such a bit as 


—til the larke song 
With notes newe hegh vp in pe ayr, Thebes 2296-7 


because in the Troy Book Lydgate so frequently uses the lark’s song mechanically, 
to date the beginning of a battle. We cannot tell, in his work, when his imagi- 
nation is perhaps, for a moment free and when he is using a formula which by 
accident shapes into a “sport.” And however interesting this list of detached 
lines, the sunrise and spring-descriptions of the Troy Book, the allusions to 
Chaucer, the feeling for little children, the monk’s real lyrical adoration of his 
crucified Master, these passages are constantly damaged by his bad stylistic 
habits, and lost in the flood of his uncontrollable verbiage. Neither in structural 
power, descriptive power, emotional power, nor metrical power, is there any 
real parallel between Lydgate and his great exemplar Chaucer. His verbosity 
and his habit of repetition are superficial faults, but none the less displeasing ; 
and deeper-seated than they are the monk’s lack of feeling for structure and 
proportion, his dulness of perception. Lydgate’s material overpowers him; he is 
the creature of routine phrase; and his deficiencies in sensitiveness, in control, 
in balance, are as evident in his versification as in his guidance of narrative. 
There also are the automatic repetition, the jerky hesitation, the failure to see 
the part in relation to the whole, which are stamped on his story-method. 

But Lydgate’s versification has been seriously and carefully discussed. 
Professor Schick, the first critical editor of a Lydgate-text, adopted for the 
pentameter line of the Temple of Glass (EETS 1891) five principal forms or 
types, which he differentiated according to the number of their syllables. His 
type 1 is regular, of five iambs; type 2 is like the preceding, but with an extra 
syllable at the verse-pause; type 3, the “Lydgate line,’ or brokenbacked line, 
lacks an unaccented syllable at the pause; type 4, the headless line, lacks the 
opening unaccented syllable; and type 5 has a trisyllabic first foot. 

This classification takes account only of the syllabic compass of the single 
verse; it makes no mention of variety in rhythmic flow within the line, of the 
lengthening or shortening of the poetic phrase around the line-unit, of the line as 
part of the poetic paragraph, or of the relation between line-and-paragraph rhythm 
and poetic content. By discussing minutely the number of syllables, it creates 
the impression that Lydgate’s versification has been analyzed; whereas every- 
thing important to rhythm has been passed over unnoticed. Professor Schick 
has no thought of rescuing Lydgate from censure by thus narrowing the scope 
of analysis; he speaks with emphasis of Lydgate’s metrical shortcomings. But 
later students, still limiting themselves to the single line, have attempted to con- 
done those shortcomings. In a monograph on the metric of the Chaucerian Tra- 
dition, published in 1910, Dr. Licklider treated the question more historically 


Chaucer often enough inserts a formula, for rime’s sake, into a couplet; cf. for example 
BoDuchess 1065, 1119, the prol. LGW 454, and especially Troilus v: 1040-41. But nearly 
always in Chaucer the vigor, the moving force of his matter, carries us over such bare patches; 
while in Lydgate there is not sufficient impetus in the context to prevent the dead halt. 


84 JOHN LYDGATE 


than did Professor Schick, with the aim of justifying, e.g., Lydgate’s line-struc- 
ture by that of modern poets. Dr. Licklider assumes, to begin with, that the 
stresses of verse are fixed, that they invariably fall upon the syllables which 
schematically come under them, whether such syllables be verbs or indefinite ar- 
ticles. Should a preposition thus appear under ictus, it is raised in value by 
“pitch-accent,” and the effect of the line is heightened by this ennobling of its 
grammatically less dignified elements. In such a verse, for example, as Milton’s 


Deep malice to conceal, coucht with revenge, 


the italicized words are raised to higher power by their position under stress ; 
and any line in Lydgate, in the Transition, in later English poetry, which shows 
this “pitch accent on relational words” acquires value thereby. 

This view of English pentameter line-structure is not here accepted. It 
is obvious that the single line shows, in both modern and medieval English verse, 
a frequent coincidence of theoretic stress with unimportant syllable; but instead 
of explaining this coincidence, in any poet, as a heightening of word-value by 
the impact of immutable stress, I shall treat the line and the paragraph as plastic, 
subject at every moment to the shaping hand of the poet; I shall recognize, as 
already stated (p. 19), the “perpetual conflict” of the verse-norm and of language- 
freedom as the living foundation of English verse. The line from Milton, above 
cited, I explain by the poet’s shift of word-weight within the verse; a heavy first 
foot, a light second, a reversed fourth, challenge the reader’s ear by their di- 
vergence from standard as regards the massing of stress, while the total weight 
of the line remains standard. Chaucer, in his handling of rhythm, shows the 
same desire to vary it, now to reduce and now to increase line-weight, now to 
reduce and now to increase breath-length, to make up a paragraph out of slightly 
differing lines, that the greatest modern poets have shown. He has not their sub- 
tleties of ear, their developed sense of balance within the single verse; such com- 
pensation, or poise of the heavy against the light foot, as that of Milton just 
noted, is not Chaucerian. But the simpler variants of tetrameter and pentameter 
flow, underweighting and reversal, are very freely used by Chaucer, and with in- 
creasing skill as he grows older. He also made, at first, extensive use of the 
line short a syllable at opening, a variant frequent in his Hous of Fame. In 
that poem (using Skeat’s text) we find not only very many single headless lines, 
but such lines grouped in pairs, occasionally in threes, and once in a sequence 
of four. But in Chaucer’s pentameter, so far as we can now judge, this lavishly- 
employed license of the short couplet becomes a minor variant; Skeat’s text of 
the General Prologue has but nine acephalous lines, and the two pairs of such 
verses in the D-fragment, the two in the Knight’s Tale, serve for especial em- 
phasis or for enumeration. 

Chaucer’s treatment of the line in this respect was not understood by Lyd- 
gate, who not only wrote the acephalous verse very freely in pentameter, but 
made as much or more use of another truncated line-form, that lacking an unac- 
cented syllable just after the verse-pause.1 It looks as if the monk thought in 
half-lines, and, having accepted a line-form headless in the first half, saw no 
reason why the second half also should not be headless. The existence of this 


* How in manhod he was peréles FaPrinces iii :3617 (headless) 
Nor allé men may nat been iliche FaPrinces i:5120 (brokenbacked) 


JOHN LYDGATE 85 


brokenbacked line in Chaucer is still questionable ; even the poorest Chaucer MSS 
show no drift to the type, and no evidence has yet been presented to prove that 
the dropping of inflexional -e would bring such a line into being oftener, e.g., 
than lines short in the fourth foot. Moreover, the mind which would lay hold 
of lines accidentally shortened at the cesura by the scribe and erect them into 
a type is a mind already thinking, as I have said, in half-lines. Lydgate’s dif- 
ference from other Transition versifiers in his use of these two truncated pen- 
tameter-forms is another reason for seeking their explanation in his individuality. 
The headless line was not written by Gower; it was not used by Hoccleve to 
any extent; it was not written by the scrupulous scribe of the Palladius; it is 
not common in later Transition verse. We can find it in late sixteenth-century 
prints, for instance in The Flower and the Leaf; but there the textual conditions 
have become too complicated to serve as evidence. So far as we yet see, the 
use of these two truncated line-forms centralizes in Lydgate, and in Chaucer there 
seems clear sanction for but one of them, the headless line. 

An explanation of Lydgate’s procedure has been variously but unsatisfac- 
torily sought. The fall of inflexional -e, as I have studied it in a small number 
of texts, produces lines clumsy in many ways, but not predominantly headless 
or brokenbacked; and there remain outside its influence a large number of 
truncated lines in Lydgate, and in Lydgate alone. If the influence of the Old 
English alliterative verse, with its sharp medial break, was strong enough to 
develop the brokenbacked line in Lydgate, why not in other poets? That Chau- 
cer’s truncated line-form should be taken up, and extended, by Lydgate and by 
Lydgate alone, of a group of versifiers using a common language and sharing 
a common history, argues some quality of difference in Lydgate himself. 

That quality I see most clearly not in his adoption of the truncated line 
but in his excessive use of it and in his extension of truncation to the second 
half-line. As regards the headless line which he could find in Chaucer, a man 
so prone to repetition as was Lydgate, so devoid of sensitiveness, of balance, and 
of feeling for variety as his narrative-wanderings and his continual formulae 
show him to have been, would not discriminate between Chaucer’s use of a variant 
and his own mass-manufacture of a staple. As regards the brokenbacked line, 
which is not Chaucer’s, the student who works through a quantity of Lydgate’s 
verse with an ear alert to its phrasing will recognize that the half-line is the fa- 
vored breath-length, and that the great number of padding phrases filling just 
half a line either supports or helps cause this tendency. If the monk felt his 
verse more in half-lines than in lines, the extent to which he uses the broken- 
backed line may be due to that limitation in him rather than to his transference 
of it as a whole line from any source, Latin or English. 

His excess of these truncated lines, his excess of padding phrases, find their 
explanation together in his lack of structural and aesthetic feeling. Some part 
of them may be due to the rate at which he was compelled to produce; but that 
it was natural to him to repeat himself is as obvious as that he thereby gave no 
offence to the taste of his contemporaries. Any man who carries repetition to 
the extent to which Lydgate carried it is a man in all respects insensitive, a 
man not quick nor clear of sight, not alive to the way character reveals itself 
in trivial action, dull of ear, deficient in taste, unaware of that “perpetual con- 
flict” between language and rhythm which, though not formulated by Chaucer 
in theory, is revealed in his practice. Such a man, because he lacks perceptual 
power, lacks therefore a plan; he repeats or dilutes himself because he is unclear 


86 JOHN LYDGATE 


about his next step; he knows that his story has an ending and has certain high 
points, but how to get from one to another, or how to make those points stand 
out, he knows not; yet he keeps talking. Lydgate’s incompetences in rhythm, in 
style, in narrative-management, cannot be exemplified in a brief essay. The an- 
alysis of many passages parallel to Chaucer, will show us, so far as rhythm is 
concerned, that Lydgate habitually writes less than half his lines iambic-normal, 
Chaucer a full half or more; it will show Lydgate’s constant use of the truncated 
line and Chaucer’s decreasing use of it as time goes on; it will show that Lyd- 
gate treats Chaucer’s rhythmic “easements” as if they were “staples,” to borrow 
terms from Professor Saintsbury. The student of narrative can take the opening 
paragraph of the Siege of Thebes and compare it with Chaucer’s mode of starting 
the Canterbury Tales; he can parallelize Chaucer’s clear completion of his twice- 
repeated Whan by Than, his gradual narrowing of the reader’s interest to focus 
on Canterbury, with Lydgate’s helpless and verbless wanderings ; he can examine 
the same Chaucerian passage beside Troy Book i:1197-1221 as regards the ar- 
rangement of line-types in a paragraph. And he will find the same man, whether 
rhythm, style, or narrative management be the angle of observation; a man 
floating in a tide of material which he cannot guide, check, or see. Lists of 
parallel passages, lists of line-types, do not show the differences between Lydgate 
and his master; they cannot make clear, for example, that a variant line may 
be pleasing or unpleasing according to its context and content; that the final 
thing in judging rhythm is not the rhythm itself but the union of rhythm and 
contained meaning. 

Thus, in Chaucer’s description of his Knight there occurs, lines 75-6, the 
following: 

Of fustian he wered a gipoun 
Al bismotered with his habergeoun. 


Were this couplet analyzed rhythmically, the stressed a of the one line, the lack 
of upbeat to the other, would be rated as harsh, and the lines placed among aber- 
rant types. But in the masterful flow of the Prologue they are carried with no 
sense of the disagreeable. For there we come upon them after the narrator has 
proved his power. We may have been but partially conscious of the strong sweep 
of the opening paragraph; we may not have noticed the effect of lengthened 
breath and of reversal in 


That fro the tyme that he first began 
To ryden out, he loved chyvalrye, 
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye; 


but we have been influenced by them, and by the roll of sounding place-names, 
names as proudly and deliberately trumpeted as Milton’s or Moody’s similar sum- 
mons to the imagination. In such context, after such prelude, the single line of 
less rhythmical quality passes current. And_,as the context carries these, so does 
the content carry the third of the lines just quoted. There is an almost identical 
structure present in either of these verses :— 


ffourme and colour merite and beaute Palladius iv :808 
Pees and quyete / concord and vnyte Thebes 4703 


But Palladius’ enumeration of the points of a horse, Lydgate’s generalized and 
overlapping terms, have none of Chaucer’s stirring emphasis on the essential 
qualities of knighthood, an emphasis which for the moment raises the pitch of life. 


JOHN LYDGATE 87 


Yet Lydgate has interest and value for the student. Historically, he sums 
up his age as definitely as did Pope or Dr. Johnson; technically his importance 
may be a negative one, but in his choice of verse-forms and subjects he is note- 
worthy ; and his vocabulary is his most permanent and positive contribution to Eng- 
lish. Among his verse-forms the pentameter seven-line stanza bulks largest, be- 
cause of the Fall of Princes, the Life of Our Lady, and St. Edmund, which to- 
gether run to over 45,000 of his ca.55,000 such lines. But the pentameter couplet. 
as in the Troy Book, Thebes, and three shorter poems, amounts te over 35,000 
lines, the four-beat couplet to 32,000, for almost 25,000 of which the Pilgrimage 
accounts. The eight-line pentameter stanza is used for many of Lydgate’s short 
religious poems; and as he may have had a freer hand there than in his long 
commissioned works, the stanza) was perhaps more to his taste than it was to 
Chaucer’s. Other verse-forms are few in the monk’s work. One or two attempts 
at a roundel, a New Year’s poem in threes, and an occasional shift of form 
within a poem, represent Lydgate’s range. The Testament is in sevens and 
eights, the Temple of Glass in rime royal and couplet; the prologues to poems, 
as in St. Edmund, St. Albon, and the Pilgrimage, are sometimes in a form other 
than that of the poem itself. In all this we cannot trace any conscious adaptation 
of form to subject; the pentameter couplet is used for the Troy Book and also 
for the Mumming at Hertford, the seven-line stanza for both comedy and trag- 
edy ; the eight-line stanza, although apparently preferred for the shorter religious 
poems, is also used for the Letter to Gloucester and for Horns Away. 

In choice of theme Lydgate has done some service to English. He intro- 
duced, it seems, the first bit of that Fool-literature which was carried so much 
further by Barclay under Brant’s—or rather Locher’s—influence; he brought in 
the Dance of Death motive; he wrote a few clumsy mummings which are appar- 
ently the first of their type in our literature; he set moving in English a pageant 
of “tragedies” which endured until the time of Shakespeare. None of his inno- 
vations had in it the germ of long life, but they count for something in our 
literary history. 

It is Lydgate’s services to the language which are both noteworthy and per- 
manent. His is not the use of words at their full metaphorical power, which 
is one of the dangerous joys of the Romantic poet. No closepacked phrases, no 
epithets rich in imaginative thrill, have to be unfolded and tasted by the mind 
as we read him. His value is for the lexicographer. Although archaic and re- 
condite terms do appear in his pages,—amate, avale, blive, enose, fage, queme, 
suppowaile, ure-—and although he unsuccessfully endeavors to obtain currency 
for flaskisable and tarage, a very large number of useful words make their first 
appearance in English under his auspices. For example :'—abuse, adjacent, adol- 
escence, aggregate*, arable*, attempt*, auburn, avaricious*, capacity*, circum- 
spect, colic*, combine*, commodious, condign, confidence, conspirator, counter- 
mand, credulity*, criminal, debar, deception, delude*, depend*, detestable*, dial, 
disappear*, dislodge*, dismay*, duplicity, entitle*, equivalent*, excel, fallible, 
fraternal*, fraudulent, gallery*, gentlemanly, grandmother, humidity*, immutable, 
impregnable, incident, incredible, inexcusable*, infallible*, intermission*, inter- 
rupt, invincible, irrigate*, magnate, massive, musical, passionate*, paternal*, per- 
suade*, pirate, powerless*, pretence*, provoke, rural, solicitude*, tedious*, ter- 


* Words marked with an asterisk are used by Lydgate earlier than the first case recorded 
in the New English Dictionary; and the list could be much extended. 


88 JOHN LYDGATE 


rible*, timorous*, tolerance, transcend*, unoccupied*. Many of these are used 
repeatedly in the Troy Book and in the Fall of Princes, the -ble and -ent words 
often in rime. In a few cases we can see the word making the crossing from 
Laurent’s French, e.g., adolescence, magnate; and the word inexcusable, stand- 
ing at the head of the second chapter of Romans, may have caught Lydgate’s eye 
there; for he, like Isidore and many another medieval rhetorician, was very much 
aware of language in the dictionary-sense. As one works with the New English 
Dictionary, it is noticeable how often the three principal fifteenth-century trans- 
lators, Trevisa, Lydgate, and Caxton, are responsible for the introduction of 
abstract but useful terms, for the development of the power to express shades 
of thought. 

Lydgate not only brings into English these convenient polysyllables, he makes 
a word familiar by repetition, often by repetition in rime or in formula. His 
padding-formulae are one of the most characteristic features of his style, and 
therefore especially revelatory of the man. Their abuse by him is precisely 
parallel to his abuse of the headless line; he found both in Chaucer, and em- 
ployed neither in Chaucer’s manner. 

Chaucer used formulae all through his work, for the sake of rime; within 
about 400 lines of the Knight’s Tale (264-676) we find out of doute 283, I dar 
wel seyn 293, as olde bokes seyn 340, 605, sothly to telle 341, 676, pleynly for 
tendyte 351; these are all handy tools for Lydgate. We find also the halfline 
ther nis namor to seye (264) a filler used by Lydgate a score of times in the Troy 
Book ; we find in line 617 as faste as euere he may, which is worked by Lydgate, 
in the form in al the haste he may, another score of times in the same poem. All 
the lines and phrases of expedited narrative, so abundant in Lydgate, he could 
find in Chaucer; see this same KnTale passage, lines 330, 332, 343, 500, 522, 559. 
Chaucer uses as first half-line the phrase This al and som, cf. PoFoules 650, 
WBprol 91; Lydgate does the same thing ten or twelve times in the Troy Book. 

But the medium in which Chaucer’s padding formulae and expletives are 
carried is of so firm and flavored a quality that our attention is not diverted by 
them. They are not only less frequent than in Lydgate, but often seem formulae 
only when we have disengaged them from their context. Lydgate, however, does 
with these rime-tags as with his headless and brokenbacked lines; they are ag- 
gressive in number, aggressively defined against a slack and ineffective back- 
ground, and emphatic of a half-line movement of thought. That the monk turned 
consciously and continually to line-tags is shown by his use of padding in the 
first half-line as well as in the second; e.g., Withoute mor, Withoute abood,— 
which occur some fifty times in the Troy Book. The pages of that poem are also 
sprinkled with colorless expletives such at platly, pleynly, in soth, sothly, used 
in mid-line; and the emptiness of these words and phrases to Lydgate’s mind is 
shown by the way he redoubles them. He writes in al the haste he may:—with- 
oute mor delay, as consecutive riming half-lines, Troy Book i:3993-4, ii:7917-18, 
8329-30; he repeats his meaning as shortly and make no delay ii:1918-19 (see 
iv:1888) ; he more than doubles on himself in ii:8556, Anon forthwith and make 
no delay. With this last we may compare his frequent repetitions such as :— 


That he constreyned right of verray nede 
Compelled was iustly to procede 
To han redres only by rigour. Troy Book ii:1773-5 


JOHN LYDGATE 89 


See also the same poem 1:3489-93, ii:2098-2100, 3761-3, iii:1231-36, 1541-3, 
1677-78, 3538, iv:153-56, 258-59, 5051-55. Of the same character are his 
lengthened repetitions in the Fall of Princes, e.g., i:1898 ff. and 1905 ff., where 
Cadmus’ prayer to Apollo is twice given in two consecutive stanzas. 

Perhaps for this last Lydgate might see a precedent in passages like Chau- 
cer’s Clerk’s Tale 410 ff. or Franklin’s Tale 337-40. He might consider that 
his use of pleynly eke withal, Troy Book ii:949, or of ouermore platly eke (ibid. 
v :2475), was justified by Chaucer’s And eke also, e.g., HoFame 178;! certainly 
the pupil uses the last-named reduplication often enough,—ten or fifteen times 
in the Troy Book alone. But whether he was following Chaucer or following a 
general rhetorical license, Lydgate was by nature prone to repetition and insensi- 
tive to its effect. No man with a feeling for style would have written the number 
of ill-fitting rime-tags which we find in the Troy Book; cf. prol. 101-2, i :95-6, 669- 
70, 3081-82 and iii:2757, ii:2155-56, 2785-86, 2789-90, 5179-80, 7809-10 and 
v:2101-2, etc. Probably neither Lydgate nor his readers saw any more incon- 
gruity in his Trojan heroes’ bidding each other farewell “with St. John to borrow,” 
Troy Book i:3082, iii:2757, than Lydgate saw in Chaucer’s use of the phrase, 
Compleynt of Mars, line 9. But other formulae of this brief selection are 
more obviously inappropriate. The appearance of Achilles’ name in rime, in line 
96 of Troy Book i, calls out platly this no les as a balancing tag ; the use of wordes 
softe, ii:2786, drives Lydgate to lowe and nat alofte to fill his couplet. The eyen 
clere or eyen glade of Trojan women are used more than once in padding phrases, 
for which Chaucer’s Troilus iv :663 may have been authorization ; and the formula 
for sour or swete appears three times in the poem, for sote or sour twice, by south 
and not by east once. This last, v:2102, is an exception to Lydgate’s usual pro- 
cedure in couplet, which is to put his clumsy padding in the earlier of the two 
lines. In his stanza-work, especially in the Fall of Princes, the padding phrase 
occurs anywhere and everywhere; some stanzas have as many as three half-line 
formulae, while tags filling an entire line I have not attempted to catalogue. 
Schick said of Lydgate that “his rime is in general pure, and skilfully handled.” 
That the bulk of the monk’s work is accurately rimed no student denies; but 
correctness is not skill, and such pairs as multitude: platly to conclude, com- 
mendable: platly this no fable, such formulae as are above exemplified, are too 
frequent in Lydgate for us to term him “skilful” in rime-management. 

As all readers know, Chaucer made free use of rime-tags; and it is easy 
to believe that Lydgate imitated him in this respect as he did in the use of the 
acephalous line, exaggerating both, driven partly by the pressure of compulsory 
translation to abuse of both. But it is not clear that Lydgate found Chaucerian 
precedent for some of his licenses in rime, for his fairly frequent assonances and 
for his riming of Troye:weye (woye) fourteen times in the Troy Book. In 
that same poem alone there are fifteen cases of assonance, nearly all of them 
on -ape:-ake. The one definite case in Chaucer, Troilus ii :884-6, is on -yke:-yte > 
but this is surely insufficient to establish for Lydgate his right to a license which 
he uses from the Black Knight to the Secrees, all through his work. 

The great number of “Chaucerian” formulae adopted by Lydgate would in 
itself lead a student to argue Chaucer’s influence on the monk; but his imitations 
and borrowings of Chaucerian material and his frequent allusions to his “master” 





*Or by “And ferther over now ayenward yit”, Troilus iv: 1027, which represents Boethius’ 
“atque e converso rursus.” 


BO ie JOHN LYDGATE 


are proof positive. The detailed story of Lydgate’s dependence on Chaucer is 
still to be written; and in appraising the facts we have to bear in mind several 
aspects of medieval literature. The regulation tone of humility towards patron 
or master must be remembered; the tone of Lydgate towards Chaucer must be 
compared with that which he uses toward Guido or Boccaccio; the tone of Hoc- 
cleve, of the Palladius-translator, etc., must be paralleled with that of Lydgate. 
It is fairly easy to differentiate the three men’s attitude to Humphrey of Glou- 
cester, for instance. The slightness and formality of Hoccleve’s connection with 
him, the conventional pomposity of most of Lydgate’s allusions and the sudden 
warmth of his personal gratitude for money-gifts, the odd little glimpses of 
Humphrey in the Palladius-epilogues and the translator’s sycophantic address of 
his patron (i:1194) as— 


But God me semeth best thou mayst resemble 
ffor verite Iustice and mansuetude, 


are differences which mean degrees in the nearness of the three writers to the 
duke, and differences in their usage of stereotyped forms. In the attitude of 
Chaucer’s two pupils toward him there is much more resemblance in tone, although 
Hoccleve’s three allusions in the De Regimine—his only mentions of his master— 
have a warmth of personal affection and grief not to be found in Lydgate’s many 
passages of praise. It is to be noted, as regards the amount of allusion by the 
two pupils, that most of Lydgate’s are in long poems parallelizing work by Chau- 
cer, such as the Siege of Thebes, the Troy Book, and the Fall of Princes; that 
Hoccleve’s short religious and occasional compositions afforded no such oppor- 
tunity for mention of the elder poet as did his one long poem, the De Regimine, 
in which the allusions appear. Also we remark that both this poem and Lydgate’s 
Troy Book were executed for Henry the Fifth; since Hoccleve did not hesitate 
to insert a picture of Chaucer into his poem, is it not a fair surmise that Henry 
professed interest in Chaucer and favored allusion to him? 

The Siege of Thebes, written as it was to supplement the Canterbury Tales, 
is naturally dependent on Chaucer. The prologue is an inept imitation of Chau- 
cer’s; the story narrates in detail the events which Chaucer had summarized in a 
few lines of the Knight’s Tale. The poem entire is therefore a homage to the elder 
writer, and so far as we yet know a homage paid on the monk’s own initiative. 
That it was written with the Knight’s Tale near Lydgate’s hand is evident from 
the crowding of Chaucer-phrases between Thebes 4480 and 4540; but that the 
Canterbury Tales-prologue was not so consulted for the Thebes-prologue is 
arguable from the lack of such direct liftings and from Lydgate’s confusion of the 
Pardoner and the Summoner. With the Troy Book and the Fall of Princes, 
frequent as are allusions to Chaucer, we cannot be sure that Henry the Fifth and 
Gloucester, the monk’s patrons, are not as much in his mind. The passages about 
women, in both poems, are as obviously attuned to the patron’s ear as are the 
laudatory prologues and epilogues; the emphasis in the Troy Book on armor, on 
heraldic device, on methods of warfare and of encampment, is planned for the 
taste of King Henry just as the dissertations on literature in the Fall of Princes 
are adapted to Gloucester. For instance, in the latter work, Lydgate prefixes 
to its fourth book a long discourse in praise of writing and writers; he takes some 
of his generalities from John of Salisbury, but the particular cases, I would sug- 


JOHN LYDGATE 91 


gest, are derived from Gloucester’s own library.!. For in the catalogue of books 
given by Humphrey to Oxford a few years later are included not only John of 
Salisbury’s Polycraticus and many of the Latin classics, but a Librum Dantes, a 
Commentaria Dantes, and many volumes of Petrarch; while in this prologue are 
discussed the Latin works of Petrarch and the writings of Virgil and of Cicero, 
with a meager but interesting allusion to Dante’s Commedia. I would think 
it possible that Lydgate was here aiming at his patron’s taste, perhaps obeying that 
patron’s command. In any case, the opinion of the patron has to be considered in 
estimating the allusions to Chaucer which are made by Hoccleve and by Lydgate. 
Some of the briefer mentions of Chaucer in the Fall of Princes arise from 
the context. Among the unfortunates in Boccaccio’s long procession are several 
included by Chaucer in the Legend of Good Women, the Monk’s Tale, and the 
Doctor’s Tale ;—Lucretia, Philomena, Dido, Virginia, Cleopatra, Caesar, Nero, 
Zenobia, Ugolino. Lydgate’s approach to these various tragedies differs. For 
Philomena (i:1786 ff.) and for Antony and Cleopatra (vi:3620 ff.) he declares 
that 
Thyng onys said be labour of Chauceer 
Wer presumpcioun me to make ageyn, 


and sends his readers to the “legende of martirs off Cupide.” For the story of 
Zenobia (viii:666 ff.) Lydgate says that because Chaucer has “compendiousli 
told al,” he will pass it over; he devotes, however, some sixty lines to her. When 
he is dealing with Caesar’s fall (vi:2815 ff.), with Nero (vii:600 ff.), with Dido 
(ii :1898 ff.), and with Virginia (i1:1345 ff.), we hear nothing of Chaucer. In 
his two introductions of Lucretia (1i:1002 ff., iii:960 ff.), the second only fol- 
lows Laurent’s French; the former, suggested by Laurent’s mention of Junius 
Brutus, in a list of high-couraged men, as Lucretia’s avenger on Tarquin, is ac- 
companied by Lydgate’s refusal to tell her story because Chaucer has already 
done so; but this refusal is set aside at Gloucester’s command, and we have 43 
stanzas of Lucrece’s farewell speech, taken, as Lydgate states, from Collucius, 
i.e., from a “declamation” by Coluccio Salutati.2 The scanty five lines given to 
Ugolino (ix :2049 ff.), not only make no mention of Chaucer but close with the 
remark “no mor of him I fynde”’; and the elaborate treatment of the Canace-story 
condemned by Chaucer carries no explanation of Lydgate’s reason for so doing. 

This variation in Lydgate’s treatment of Chaucer is paralleled by variation 
in the monk’s method of quoting his “master.” There are clumsinesses enough in 


*This suggestion derives support from the allusion to Dante and to Petrarch found in 
book iii:3858-9, in a short begging-letter chapter not preserved by all MSS, and perhaps 
worked by scribes into the portion of the text with which it had been sent to Gloucester. Note 
also the two fragments of Greek, ii:1855 and iv:568, not in Laurent’s French, with the copy 
of “Verba Graeca et interpretationes linguae Latinae”’ given to Oxford in 1443 by Humphrey 
with the Dante and the Petrarch books above mentioned. See Anstey’s Munimenta Academica, 
pp. 768-772, and see note below on the Lucrece-tragedy. 


*Writyng causeth the chaplet to be greene 
Bothe of Esope and of Iuuenal 
Dantis labour it doth also meynteene 
By a report verray celestial 
Sunge amonge Lombardis in especial 
Whos thre bookis the grete wondres tell 
Of heuene aboue of purgatorie & hell. iv :134-140 


* See my paper in Modern Philology 25 :49-57. 


O2 JOHN LYDGATE 


Lydgate on occasion; it might be said that a man who renders line 80 of the 
Venus— 
Sith ryme in English hath swich scarsitee 


in the two forms— 


Syth bat in ryme ynglysch hath skarsete Troy Book ii:168, 
Seyn how that Ynglyssh in ryme hath skarsete FaPrinces ix :3312, 


is too careless and too obtuse to be considered a true admirer of Chaucer; it 
might be said that a man who (in Horns Away) confuses Alanus’ description 
of Nature and Chaucer’s description of Venus is no reader of the Parlement of 
Foules. Nevertheless, there are elsewhere in Lydgate, especially in the Black 
Knight, very faithful echoes of the Parlement; and at any moment in Lydgate 
there appear such phrases as “woful Myrrha,” ‘“vois memoriall,” “hateful harm,” 
“peple vnsad and euer vntrewe,” “pres hath envie,” “thoroughfare of woo,”— 
which must mean that reminiscences of his master’s text came easily and naturally 
into Lydgate’s memory. Considering this, and considering longer passages such 
as FaPrinces iv :2955-56 or St. Albon iii:457 ff., we can hardly assert that Lyd- 
gate’s knowledge of Chaucer was superficial. We may find fault with Mr. Ches- 
terton for talking of the “rescue of Miss Lammle,’ and point out that he has 
confused poor futile little Georgiana Podsnap with the designing Lammle-couple 
who tried to entrap her; but we should not be justified in saying that Mr. Chester- 
ton has thus demonstrated his ignorance of Dickens. The present question re- 
solves itself into a weighing of quantity against quality; and so far as I can 
now see, the amount of Lydgate’s conscious and unconscious citation of Chaucer 
is great enough to prove his industrious reading of the elder poet. 

Classical authors have indeed exerted small influence on Lydgate’s text, with 
the noteworthy exception of Ovid,—the more noteworthy because the Bury St. 
Edmunds library, although rich for its time in classics, contained apparently no 
Ovid. Their influence, or that of any writer on Lydgate, may be considered 
under one of four categories:—his translation of an entire work, his insertion 
of a long borrowed passage, his adoption of details from a classic into a work 
derived mainly from other sources, the recurrence all through his productivity of 
phrasal echoes. It is this last, as we have just seen, which clearly proves the 
power of Chaucer over Lydgate; taken in conjunction with the continual use of 
Chaucerian rime-tags and the steady abuse of a specifically Chaucerian line-type, 
it shows the pressure of Chaucer on a mind imitative, repetitive, careless, but 
none the less honestly admiring. No classical writer exerts any such influence 
on Lydgate. : 

There is only one classical writer, indeed, who can be said to exert any in- 
fluence on Lydgate,—Ovid. Other writers of the ancient world are names or 
nearly names, especially the Greeks. Homer is for Lydgate, as for Chaucer, the 
honeymouthed father of song and the too-partial champion of Achilles; Plato 
holds the key “fof dyvyn Ideie”; Euripides and Demosthenes are mentioned in 
dependence on Laurent’s French; Aristotle, except in the pseudo-Aristotelian 


1Lydgate’s statement, FaPrinces, i:6452, that Samson’s hair was cut by Dalila diverges 
from Judges xvi:17, where she “vocavit tonsorem,’ toward Chaucer’s indefinite phrase in 
MoTale 77 that she “made to clippe” the sleeper’s hair. Also note how the account of the 
Broche of Thebes, FaPrinces i:324-5, is influenced by Chaucer’s Mars 245-50. 


JOHN LYDGATE 93 


letter to Alexander, is as much a name as is Homer. Of the Latins, Virgil is 
less poet and more sorcerer to Lydgate than to Chaucer; Horace is unknown, 
as he was to Chaucer; Livy and Juvenal are names, as is Persius; Statius is 
nominal authority for the Theban story, but was probably no more used at first 
hand than was Boccaccio for the Fall of Princes. The subjects of several of 
Seneca’s tragedies are known to Lydgate, and as moralist he is also often men- 
tioned, but not so often as is Cicero (“Tullius”), from whom, however, but one ( ?) 
passage is quoted. Ovid only, of the classics, has to any degree passed into the 
fabric of Lydgate’s work. He is frequently mentioned in the Fall of Princes, 
contrary to the practice of Lydgate’s French source; and not only are Laurent’s 
mythological narratives sometimes altered to follow the Metamorphoses, but 
Ovid’s lines are on occasion translated and interwoven with the English. 

It should be emphasized that all this happens in the Fall of Princes, and that 
the less conventional of Lydgate’s classical allusions are nearly all to be found 
there. Not only is the list of Chaucer’s work in that poem, but lists of the writ- 
ings of Virgil, Cicero, Petrarch, etc., and whatever Lydgate knows about Dante. 
The prologues and epilogues to other poems, e.g., St. Edmund, and one of Lyd- 
gate’s mummings, are liberally seasoned with a mixture of Helicon, Clio, Aurora, 
Polyphemus, Socrates, Tullius, Homer, and Atropos, but in an entirely lifeless 
and routine-fashion. The Fall of Princes allusions have some slender vitality in 
them, and for that vitality, I believe, Humphrey of Gloucester was largely re- 
sponsible. The heavy task which he assigned to his protégé did indeed crush 
Lydgate’s verse and style to worse than a dead level much of the time; but it 
was Gloucester who ordered Lydgate to read and use Coluccio Salutati, Gloucester 
who spurred Lydgate to talk about literature occasionally instead of about morality 
all the time, Gloucester for whom the attempts at humor were constructed, Glou- 
cester whose library included both Petrarch and Dante. The interpolations from 
Salutati and from John of Salisbury in the Fall of Princes, the prologue to book iv 
with its catalogues, are of no literary value; but they are of a better substance 
than is the interpolation about false gods, in Troy Book ii, from Isidor. Lydgate’s 
knowledge of Petrarch or of Dante was infinitesimal, but that a cloistered monk 
of his time should have that minute particle is of interest. 

We cannot, it is true, understand why Lydgate should know so little of Dante 
and of Boethius, when he found their names so clearly-cut in Chaucer. Occasion- 
ally we think we hear a Dante-echo in him; the lines Troy Book iv:3014 ff. run 
much as does the “Taccia Lucan omai” of Inferno 25:94 ff.; but the contact is 
with Chaucer’s MerchTale 488 ff. The most famous of all Dante-passages, para- 
phrased by Tennyson as “A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier 
things,’ comes to mind when we find in FaPrinces i :645-6,— 


For thilke sorwe surmountith euery sorwe 
Which next folwith afftir felicite,— 


but Lydgate derives proximately from Chaucer’s Troilus 111:1625-28, ultimately 
from the De Consolatione ii, prose 4. Of his several repetitions of the thought, 
FaPrinces 1:3529-30, iii:722-24, iv:2308-10, only the second has the notion of 
remembrance as in Chaucer and in Dante; yet Lydgate’s direct dependence upon 
Boethius is less likely than inexactness of Chaucer-memory on his part. For his 


94 JOHN LYDGATE 


knowledge of Boethius, except for one translated bit, is surprisingly small and 
colorless ; see p. 185 here. 

Other reading by Lydgate shows itself hardly more than in his following of 
a prescribed source, be it saint’s life, Dance of Death, or Guido delle Colonne’s 
Trojan story. There is one mention of Gower (FaPrinces ix:3410), but the 
allusion is only a citation from Chaucer; and although Macaulay has pointed out 
that the Glasgow MS of the Confessio Amantis is supposed to have come from 
the Bury library, the only hint of Lydgate’s Gower-knowledge is his telling of the 
Canace-story. Hampole has just a mention. We do not here discuss Lydgate’s 
Biblical knowledge, or his use of Josephus; but his reading of English writers 
outside Chaucer, or of. any classical writer outside Ovid, is not proved. The 
extent of his acquaintance with such medieval writers as Fulgentius, John of 
Salisbury, or Isidor of Seville, is, not yet investigated; his interpolation from 
Isidor into the Troy Book, and his other mentions of the Spanish encyclopedist, 
have especial interest when we recall the copy of Isidor’s Synonyma in the Bodleian 
Library, MS Laud Misc. 233, on the last leaf of which is written “Sciant presentes 
ac futuri quod ego Iohannis Lydgate,” and on the first leaf ‘Liber monachorum 
sancti Edmundi.” 

The use which Lydgate makes of his reading is mechanical, and he is always 
the ecclesiastic. He censures the vices of his time as a Churchman censures, not 
with desire to cleanse society for society’s sake, but with desire that society shall 
submit to the Church. One thing of which he feels real personal horror is dissen- 
sion within the State; to that subject he returns again and again, throughout all 
his work; and if the prose Serpent of Division be his, to that subject he has 
devoted a special tractate. The quarrels of kinsmen are so often lamented by 
Lydgate, the recoil of a bloody deed on its perpetrator so often emphasized, that 
it is impossible not to connect his strong feeling in these respects with the state of 
his times. Yet his direct allusions to contemporary history are not many; ctf. 
for instance FaPrinces viii:2457. And although his general political ideas were 
doubtless ultra-conservative, he is too vague a thinker to grasp the full meaning 
of some passages which he quotes. Laurent, with similar insensitiveness, had 
translated for the duke of Berri, in his second book, all the vehement republicanism 
of Boccaccio against tyrants; and although Lydgate does indeed at this point sub- 
stitute a long digression on “the body politic’ from ?John of Salisbury, he later 
(FaPrinces ix :1443-46) says, quite in Boccaccio’s key, 


Philisophres and poetis eek deuise 

In ther sawes prudent and notable 
Blood of tirauntis is noble sacrefise 
To God aboue whan thei be vengable. 


There is enough of this language about tyrants in the churchman John of Salis- 
bury! to give the fifteenth-century mind, either aristocratic or ecclesiastical, a 
view of the denunciation as a formula. It assuredly never occurred either to 
Laurent or to Lydgate that he could arouse any indignant feeling in his patron 
by copying the quotation. Lydgate’s own idea of the poet’s duty is independently 
expressed in the Fall of Princes iii :3830-36 ; he says— 


Ther cheeff labour is vicis to repreue 
With a maner couert similitude 


1See Emerton, Humanism and Tyranny, Cambridge, 1925. 


JOHN LYDGATE 95 


And non estat with ther language greeve 
Bi no rebukyng of termys dul and rude 
What euer thei write on vertu ay conclude 
Appeire no man in no maner wise 

This thoffice of poetis that be wise. 


The same mixture of tone runs all through his work. He insists on the “poraile” 
as the support of monarchy more than once and more than twice, but his language 
about the instability of the commons is the same as that of Chaucer ; and his hor- 
ror of a churl in power is almost as great as his horror of civil dissension, al- 
though he praises natural “gentilesse” as Chaucer had praised it. Lydgate is, 
in fact, too little politician or satirist to have a consistent tone. 

In minor or more personal aspects, Lydgate has been praised for his ten- 
derness toward children, for his defence of women, for his strong nature-feeling ; 
we are told that he can be both deeply pathetic and admirably humorous, and 
that on occasion he can show “a stiller kind of majesty.” The first-named is 
indeed one of his most engaging qualities; he rarely mentions a child without 
dwelling on its smallness, its softness, its helplessness, even its smile. He may 
spoil his pictures by accompanying ineptitudes, as in the Canace-letter, but his 
feeling is real; and on such passages, or on, e.g., the (overlong) dying speech of 
Polyxena in Troy Book iv:6731 ff., rests much of his claim to command of 
pathos. His “humor” is almost entirely bound up with his language about 
women; and here the longer passages are a less trustworthy guide than the 
shorter. In the Troy Book he frequently bewails Guido’s wicked anti-feminist 
tongue, and follows a lengthy attack on women, translated from the Latin, by 2 
lengthier defense and a hearty rating of his author. But more than a few touches 
elsewhere in the work, touches of mock courtesy or of michievous comment, 
show that the poet’s eye was on Henry the Fifth, and that he was alert to provide 
entertainment for his patron. Compare for instance the meeting of Jason and 
Medea or of Helen and Paris; and in the Fall of Princes the monkish jocularity 
over Orpheus’ loss of his wife, i:5825-31, or the jest as to the fewness of good 
women, 1:1805, 2849, etc., or the line closing the description of Candalus’ queen, 
saying that Nature, busy in augmenting her beauty, “hadde forget for to make 
hir trewe.” In these and other sex-gibes (cf. the Mumming at Hertford, also 
done as aristocratic amusement) is to be found the bulk of Lydgate’s attempts 
at humor; and these are precisely in the medieval tradition, as is the contradic- 
tion between them and the lavish praise of woman, e.g., in the Flower of Cour- 
tesy. The ecclesiastic who both worshipped the Virgin Mother and shrank from 
every woman as the daughter of mischief-making Eve saw no incongruity in 
his pictures of woman. 

Lydgate’s nature-pictures are also of a mixed character. They often have 
a sort of freshness, especially the many of the Troy Book; but they are nearly 
always drawn with the help of mythology and of astronomy, servants who can 
easily overpower a master not possessed of word-magic. Chaucer had been suc- 
cessful as he opened the Canterbury Tales, but Lydgate is only at times partially 
successful. Here, as always in his work, the edge of sensation is not keen enough 
to bring the blood of real expression. Very rarely do we find a happy epithet, 
as in “smooth rain” or the “restless stone” of Sisyphus. There are two lines 
in the Troy Book, iii:2746-48, which remind us of Keats’s “early sobbing of 


96 JOHN LYDGATE 


the morn,” just as other passages seem to have given a hint to Shakespeare.' 
There is, very infrequently, a bit of real observation, such as the description of 
smoking lime, Troy Book iv :5927-28, or the several allusions to leaderless sheep; 
and the picture of convent-robbers in St. Edmund may owe its existence to 
actual experience. See also the (muddled) metaphor of harrowed soil in Fa- 
Princes ix :691-2, and best of all the line FaPrinces iii:252, where Lydgate says 
to the hated figure of Poverty, wandering from door to door, “And many a dogge 
hath on thi staff ignawe.” Laurent spoke only of “barking dogs.” Dulness of 
sense-perception on the one hand, the weight of stereotyped formula on the 
other, hold down Lydgate’s feeling for nature just as they hold down his nar- 
rative progress. 

Nearly all his work is lifeless. He did fairly well in beast-fables such as 
the Churl and the Bird, still better in the Horse, Goose, and Sheep, but failed 
completely in his Aesop stories. His religious narratives, except perhaps St. 
Margaret, are weakly done; St. Edmund is particularly wooden, although not 
so hopelessly bad as the Guy of Warwick. The longer romantic narratives, al- 
though unsteadily handled, and heavy with repetitions, have points of interest. 
In one channel only, the religious lyric, did the monk find occasionally free ut- 
terance; passages of the Testament, especially where Lydgate imagines his 
Savior as addressing him, have real sincerity and power. 

But it was upon his two long narrative poems that the fame of Lydgate 
rested in the century after his death. The influence of the Troy Book is marked 
on Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes; Caxton not only professed himself un- 
worthy to bear Lydgate’s inkhorn, when taking up the tale of Troy, but echoed 
the monk’s phraseology in the proheme to his second edition of the Canterbury 
Tales and lavished praise on his “master” in his Book of Curtesye (see EETS 
ed., pp. 36-40). Lydgate was diligently read by Hawes, who is said to have 
known much of his verse by heart, and to have entertained Henry the Seventh 
therewith. The Fall of Princes was imitated by Cavendish, by the writers of 
A Mirror for Magistrates, and by Barclay; the reprint of it in 1554 and of the 
Troy Book in 1555 came close in time to the publication of Hardyng’s Chronicle, 
to the third edition of Fabyan’s Chronicle, and to the upgrowth of the English 
chronicle-play. In the seventeenth century Heywood rewrote the Troy Book 
as the Life and Death of Hector, and John Lane, the continuator of the Squire’s 
Tale, published a supposed rewriting of Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick, in which 
the monk appears as prologue and epilogue. Those functions, and that of 
Chorus, Lydgate had already filled in Tarlton’s lost play of the Seven Deadly 
Sins. He appears, with Gower and Chaucer, in Ben Jonson’s masque of the 
Golden Age Restored, and with them is cited by Jonson in his Grammar. 

The association of Lydgate’s name with Chaucer’s, or with those of Gower 
and Chaucer, was long the rule. The fifteenth century apparently marked no 
difference between them. Hoccleve mentions Gower with Chaucer, terming him 
also “master,” though with no such personal warmth as he gives to his language 
about Chaucer. Bokenam, in the prologue to his life of St. Agnes, makes 





* With Troy Book ii:8197, where the bloody battleground is described as “That first was 
grene turned into red,” or with the same phrasing i:4100-01, Thebes 2305-6, cp. Macbeth 
ii,2 :64, “Making the green one red.” With Troy Book iii :5662, “As he lyuede in his apparaile,” 
cp. Hamlet iii,4:134, “in his habit as he lived.” 


JOHN LYDGATE 97 


Pallas say that her fresh flowers have all been gathered by Gower, Chaucer, 
and Lydgate, the third of whom yet lives. Burgh, although he begins his ad- 
dress of homage to Lydgate with a line which is ultimately Chaucer’s, makes no 
mention of the elder poet in his list of famous rhetoricians, and terms Lydgate 
the flower and treasure of poetry. The unknown writer of the poem published 
p. 198 here calls Lydgate the fit successor of Chaucer; and the writer of How a 
Lover Praiseth His Lady, while commending Chaucer warmly, mentions Gower, 
Lydgate, Ovid, and Statius along with him. George Ashby wrote of ‘“Maisters 
Gower, Chaucer and Lydgate, Primier poetes of this nacion’”; and Forrest in 
the prologue to his Joseph names the three together. Hawes lavishes praise on 
Lydgate, and it is not until Skelton’s Philip Sparrow that we find a discrimi- 
nation among the three elder poets. 

From the 1558 edition of the Fall of Princes through the seventeenth cen- 
tury there are no reprints of Lydgate except those of his poems which are 
carried along under Chaucer’s name in the editions by Speght. But John Dart, 
modernizing the Black Knight in 1718, proclaimed Lydgate the greatest poet 
that England (or perhaps the world) had ever produced,—an opinion not shared 
by the candid Mrs. Cooper, editor of The Muses’ Library, who in 1737 remarked 
that she had “waded through” a large volume of his work without finding any 
of the supposed equality with Chaucer. In 1802 Ritson called Lydgate “a vol- 
uminous, prosaic, and drivelling monk”; but Gray, in his essay on Lydgate, 
written much earlier but printed 1814, attributes the “long processes” of the 
monk’s writing to the taste of his time, and praises him for his power of raising 
tender emotion and for a frequent “stiller kind of majesty” in expression. Lowell 
termed Lydgate’s verse “a barbarous jangle’; and both Gosse and Saintsbury, 
in their histories of English literature, have spoken of his intolerable prolixity and 
his deficient metrical ear, although Gosse, as already noted, adds that a selection 
could probably be made which would do him greater credit than does the whole 
mass. Gosse also mentions appreciatively the gentleness and sympathy for which 
Gray had praised Lydgate; but Churton Collins, in our own day, has far outdone 
Gray in the warmth of his commendation. He declares that Lydgate was a poet 
of fine genius, that his descriptions of nature almost rival Chaucer’s, that his 
powers of pathos are of a high order, that his style and verse are often of 
exquisite beauty, and that, at his best, he is one of the most musical of poets. 

Of such an estimate of Lydgate it can only be said that the perspective 
of English poetry must have disappeared from before the eyes of a man who 
applies to Lydgate words better applicable to Keats. 

If we turn from the opinions of single critics to the testimony of the press, 
we find that while about seventy MSS of the Canterbury Tales and sixteen of 
Troilus survive, there are forty of Hoccleve’s De Regimine Principum and thirty 
of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, of Lydgate’s Troy Book about a score, still extant. 
Caxton, who printed the Canterbury Tales twice and Troilus once, issued Lyd- 
gate’s Horse, Goose, and Sheep thrice, the Churl and Bird twice, the Temple of 
Glass and the Life of Our Lady once each; also a few brief poems, perhaps as 
“fillers.” Wynkyn de Worde published the Canterbury Tales twice and the 
Troilus once, the Temple of Glass three times and the Churl and Bird, the Horse, 
Goose, and Sheep, the Black Knight, the Siege of Thebes, and the Virtues of the 
Mass, once each; he also put out a set of extracts from the Fall of Princes, from 
Chaucer, etc., as “The prouerbes of Lydgate.” It was Richard Pynson who 


98 JOHN LYDGATE 


undertook Lydgate’s longer poems, printing both the Troy Book (1513) and 
two editions of the Fall of Princes, 1494 and 1527; he also reissued the Temple 
of Glass and the Churl and Bird, and printed the Testament. Minor printers 
issued, between 1515 and 1531, the Legend of St. Austin at Compton, the Life 
of St. Albon, and the Life of Our Lady. In the years between 1554 and 1558 
there was a sudden “boom” in Lydgate’s longer poems, the Fall of Princes ap- 
pearing in 1554 and 1558, the Troy Book in 1555; but thereafter, for nearer 
three hundred than two hundred years, only a few of Lydgate’s shorter poems 
and the Siege of Thebes remained in print, carried along with Chaucer in the 
editions of 1561 and following. In 1818, 1822, the Roxburghe Club reprinted, 
as literary rarities, Lydgate’s Horse, Goose, and Sheep, his Churl and Bird, and 
his Black Knight; in 1827 Nicolas’ Chronicle of London, in 1859 Wright’s 
Political Poems, included several texts by Lydgate or ascribed to him; in 1840 
the first collection of the monk’s shorter poems was edited by J. O. Halliwell for 
the Percy Society,— a task most indifferently performed. Since 1864, when the 
Early English Text Society began publishing, texts of Lydgate have been steadily 
appearing ; for them and for the poems edited by German doctorate-candidates, 
see the appended Select List of the monk’s works. Various collections of Middle 
English verse have also included work by Lydgate, e.g., Skeat’s Chaucerian and 
Other Pieces (vol. vii of the Oxford Chaucer), Horstmann’s Altenglische Le- 
genden, Neilson and Webster’s Chief British Poets of the Fourteen and 
Fifteenth Centuries. 


Criticism of Lydgate :— 

Thomas Gray’s essay, in Gosse’s ed. of Gray’s Works, vol. i. 

Warton’s Hist. Eng. Poetry, in Warton-Hazlitt ed., iii:53 ff. 

Morley’s English Writers, vol. vi. 

Ward’s English Poets vol. i; ten Brink’s Hist. Eng. Lit., vol. ii; Jusserand’s 
Literary Hist. of the Eng. People, i:498-501; brief treatments by Gosse and 
by Saintsbury in their short hists. of English literature; Courthope in his 
Hist. Eng. Poetry, vol. i; Saintsbury in Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit., vol. ii, 
chap. on The English Chaucerians. Sidney Lee’s article in the DictNat- 
Biog. is compact, but needs revision, especially on the bibliographical side. 

The extravagant praise of Churton Collins in his Ephemera Critica, e.g., pp. 
98, 115, 199, does not carry conviction to a careful student. 

Schick’s introd. to his EETS ed. of the Temple of Glass is still the best guide 
to knowledge of Lydgate. 

Koeppel’s monographs on the Fall of Princes (see p. 151 here, foot) and on the 
Siege of Thebes (p. 120) are of value; that by E. Gattinger on Die Lyrik 
Lydgates, Vienna, 1896, is unsound. 


Essays on Special Points :— 

F. Reuss, Das Naturgefiihl bei Lydgate, in Archiv 122 :269-300. 

Moorman, Interpretation of Nature in Eng. Poetry, Quellen u. Forschungen, vol. 
95 (1905). See chap. 9. 

G. Reismiiller, Romanische Lehnworter bei Lydgate, Munich, 1909. 

R. Hingst, Die Sprache Lydgates aus seinen Reimen, Greifswald, 1908. 

A. H. Licklider, Chapters on the Metric of the Chaucerian Acar: Balti- 
more, 1910. 

H. Reger, Die epische Casur in der Chaucerschule, Bayreuth, 1910. 


JOHN LYDGATE 99 


C. F. Babcock, The Metrical Use of Inflectional -e in Middle English, with par- 
ticular reference to Chaucer and Lydgate, in PMLA 29:50 ff. 

A. L. McCobb, The Loss of Unaccented -e in the Transition Period, in PMLA 
29 :39-41. 

E. Hiittmann, Das partic. prasens bei Lydgate im Vergleich mit Chaucers Ge- 

brauch, Kiel diss., 1914. 

. Courmont, Studies on Lydgate’s Syntax in the Temple of Glass, Paris, 1912. 

. Hittmair, Das Zeitwort “do” in Chaucers Prosa, Leipzig, 1923. See pp. 85-91. 

P. Hammond, The Nine-Syllabled Pentameter Line in some Post-Chaucerian 

MSS, in ModPhil 23 :129-52. 


> 


THE CANON 


The larger part of the work attributed to Lydgate may with tolerable cer- 
tainty be treated as his; but a number of poems assigned to him, from the day 
of Hawes to our own, are doubtful or more than doubtful. Hawes, in his 
Pastime of Pleasure, stanzas 184-187, mentioned eight poems by the monk; for 
the passage see p. 281 here, and the Notes. More business-like bibliographies, so 

far as intention is considered, are to be found in :— 


John Bale, Scriptorum illustrium Maioris Brytannie ——Catalogus, 1557. See pp. 586-7. 

John Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. from the MS notebook of Bale by R. L. 
Poole and Mary Bateson, Oxford, 1902. See pp. 228-231. 

John Stow’s list of 112 works by Lydgate appended to the text of the Siege of Thebes 
in Speght’s 1598 Chaucer. Stow cited usually from MSS, and is better worth 
heeding than is the flimsiness of Bale. 

John Pits, Relationum Historicarum de Rebus Anglicis, tomus primus, Paris, 1619. 
See pp. 632-34. Based on Bale. 

Thomas Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, ed. David Wilkins, 1748. See pp. 
489-93 for long list of Eng. titles and MS-references. 

For discussion of the above, see H. N. MacCracken’s EETS ed. of the Minor 
Poems of Lydgate, vol. 1, 1911, xxxiv-xlii. 

Joseph Ritson, in his Bibliographia Anglo-Poetica, 1802, printed a list of 251 “works” 
supposedly by Lydgate; this list Schick, in his EETS ed. of the Temple of Glass, 
1891, pp. cxlvili-cliii, justly denounces as an “Augean stable of disorder, glaring 
mistakes, and inextricable confusion.” Ritson was criticised and a new list 
prepared by MacCracken in an essay on the Lydgate Canon prefixed to his EETS 
volume above mentioned. This study I have elsewhere (Anglia Beiblatt 24:140- 
145) reviewed as not sufficiently judicial; a number of poems are added to the 
canon on Dr. MacCracken’s opinion alone,—the subjective method for which 
we censure Stow’s treatment of Chaucer. 

The list of Lydgate’s works in the DictNatBiog., s.v. Lydgate suffers from lack of 
method, and has frequent inaccuracies. 

Notes contributory to the establishment of a Lydgate-canon will be found in Anglia 
28 :1-28 (1905), Anglia 30:320-48 (1907). 


100 JOHN LYDGATE 


SELECT LIST 


of Lydgate’s longer or more frequently mentioned poems; for the many short poems 
bearing no definite titles, and for the shorter religious poems, see MacCracken’s 
ed. of the Minor Poems, EETS vol. i; and see his prefixed essay on the canon. 


Aesop, Fables of, ed. Sauerstein, in Anglia 9:1-24 (1886) ; ed. Zupitza, in Archiv 85:1- 
28. See Sauerstein, Ueber Lydgates Aesopusuebersetzung, Halle diss., 1885. 

Albon and Amphabell (Saints), ed. Horstmann, Berlin, 1882. 

Assembly of Gods (probably not by Lydgate), ed. Triggs, EETS, 1895. See Rudolph, 
Lydgate und die Assembly of Gods, Berlin, 1909. See my Chaucer Manual, p. 407. 

Austin, St. at Compton. In Halliwell, p. 135; in MacCracken, i:193. 

Black Knight, Complaint of the. For early eds. with Chaucer see my Manual, pp. 
413-15. Poem ed. Skeat vii:245; ed. Krausser, in Anglia 19:211-290. 

Bycorne and Chichevache. In Dodsley’s Old Plays, 1780, vol. 12; in Halliwell, p. 129, 
repr. Neilson and Webster, p. 220; in this volume, p. 113. 

Churl and Bird. In Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, 1652; repr. from 
Caxton for Roxburghe Club, 1818; in Halliwell, p. 179, repr. Neilson and 
Webster, p. 208; in this volume, p. 102. 

Corpus Christi, Procession of. In Halliwell, p. 95; in MacCracken, i:35. 

Court of Sapience. Probably not by Lydgate. See p. 258 here. 

Dance Macabre. In Bergen’s ed. of the Fall of Princes, p. 1025; in this volume, p. 124 

Departing of Chaucer. In Notes and Queries 1872 i:381; in app. vi to Furnivall’s EETS 
ed. of Thynne’s Animadversions; in ModPhil 1:331, repr. by Ruud in his 
brochure on Thomas Chaucer, 1926, p. 119. 

Dietary. See the EETS Babees Book, p. 54; in Halliwell, p. 66; repr. Neilson and Web- 
ster, p. 221. See MacCracken’s essay on the canon. 

Edmund and Fremund (Saints). In Hortsmann’s Altenglische Legenden, Heilbronn, 
1881, p. 376. 

Fall of Princes, ed. Bergen, Carnegie Instit. and EETS, 1923-27. See pp. 150 ff. here. 

Falls of Seven Princes. In EnglStudien 43:10. 

Fabula Duorum Mercatorum, ed. Zupitza-Schleich, Vienna, 1897. To MacCracken’s 
list of MSS add Cambridge Univ. Hh iv, 12. 

Flower of Courtesy, ed. Skeat vii: 266. See my Chaucer Manual, p. 424. 

George, Saint. In Engl. Studien 43:10; in MacCracken, i:145. 

Giles, Saint. In Horstmann, Altengl. Legenden, p. 371; in MacCracken, i:161. 

Gloucester, Complaint for My Lady of. In Anglia 27:381. By Lydgate? 

Gloucester, Epithalamium for. In Anglia 27 :385; in this volume, p. 142. 

Gloucester, Letter to. In Nicolas, Chron. of London, 1827; in Halliwell, p. 49; in this 
volume, p. 149. 

Guy of Warwick. Text of MS Laud 683 ed. Zupitza, Vienna, 1873; text of Harvard 
Univ. 530 F, in John Shirley’s hand, ed. F. N. Robinson, Harv. Studies v:197- 
213 (1896). Bit in Zupitza’s Alt u. Mittelengl. Uebungsbuch, repr. Maclean’s 
Old and Middle Eng. Reader, 1898. 

Henry VI, Coronation Poem. In Wright, Polit. Poems, ii:141. 

Henry VI, Entry into London. In Ellis’ ed. of Fabyan’s Chronicle, 1811; in Nicolas’ 
Chron. of London, 1827; in Halliwell, p. 1; in Archiv 126:75; in Kingsford’s 
Chronicles of London, 1905. On the roundel of the poem see Archiv 96:191. 

Henry VI, Pedigree of. In Wright, Polit. Poems, ii:131. 

Horns Away. In this volume, p. 110, where see refs. 

Horse, Goose, and Sheep. The de Worde print is repr. Roxburghe Club, 1822. Poem 
ed. Degenhart, Leipzig, 1900. In EETS PolitReligLovePoems (1903), p. 15. 

Kings of England, Verses on. In Gairdner’s Histor. Collections, 1876; in Three Fif- 
teenth Cent. Chronicles, 1880. To MacCracken’s list of MSS add Trin. College 
Dublin 516, Hatfield 281, Lambeth 306. 


JOHN LYDGATE 101 


Life of Our Lady. No modern ed. yet available. To MacCracken’s list of MSS add 
Durham V, ii, 16, Hunterian U, 3, 5 at Glasgow, a portion in Huntington 144 
(formerly Huth), etc. 

London Lickpenny. Probably not by Lydgate. In this volume, p. 237, q. v. 

Margaret, Life of St. In Horstmann, Altengl. Legenden, p. 446; in MacCracken, 
ZS: 

Margaret, see Queen Margaret. 

Mass, The Lover’s. Probably not by Lydgate. See p. 207 here. 

Mass, Virtues of the. In Huth’s Fugitive Tracts, 1875; in MacCracken, i:87. 

Mumming at Hertford. In Anglia 22:364, repr. Neilson and Webster p. 223. The other 
mummings by Lydgate are in Brotanek’s Englische Maskenspiele, 1902. These 
clumsy but historically important poems were long supposed lost. 

Nightingale Poems, Two, ed. Glauning, EETS, 1900. See Anglia Beiblatt 16 :360. 

Order of Fools. In Halliwell, p. 164. In the EETS Booke of Precedence, p. 79. 

Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, EETS, 1899-1904. 

Prospect of Peace. In Wright, Polit. Poems, ii :209. 

Queen Margaret’s Entry into London. By Lydgate? Texts printed by Carleton Brown 
in MLReview 7 :225, by Robt. Withington in ModPhil 13:53. 

Reason and Sensuality, ed. Sieper, EETS, 1901. 

Secrees of Olde Philisoffres, ed. Steele, EETS, 1894. Corrections by Prosiegel, Book 
of the Governance of Kings, Munich diss., 1903. 

Stans Puer ad Mensam. In Reliquiae Antiquae, i:156; in EETS Babees Book, p. 26; 
in EETS Booke of Precedence, p. 56. 

Temple of Glass, ed. Schick, EETS, 1891. An extract from Schick is in Neilson and 
Webster, p. 213. See MacCracken in PMLA 23:129-40; see Courmont as 
p. 99 ante. 

Testament. In Halliwell, p. 232; in MacCracken, 1:329. 

Thebes, Siege of, or Story of, ed. Erdmann, EETS, 1911, text. Prologue in Wiilker’s 
Altengl. Lesebuch, ii:105 (from Stow of 1561); in Anglia 36:360; in Spurgeon’s 
Chaucer Allusion i:26-31; and p. 118 here. See my Chaucer Manual, p. 456. 
A selection from part ii is in Skeat’s Specimens Eng. Lit. 1394-1579. 

Troy Book, ed. Bergen, EETS, 1906-08, text. A bit is repr. by Neilson and Web- 
ster, p. 216. 

For Lydgate’s prose work, see MacCracken’s ed. of the Serpent of Division, 
Oxford, 1911, and note by same in MLReview 8:103. See, in the Harvard MS 530 F, 
a continuation of the prose Brut, or chronicle of England, which the copyist John 
Shirley in a long heading asserts to be the work of Lydgate. This heading is printed 
Harvard Studies v:185. 

Besides the Assembly of Gods, the Court of Sapience, the Lover’s Mass, London 
Lickpenny, etc., many other works have been falsely ascribed to Lydgate. Walton’s 
translation of Boethius was credited to Lydgate as noted on p. 39 here; Warton opined 
that the Coventry Corpus Christi Play was “very probably” by Lydgate, and Wright 
hinted his authorship of the Payne and Sorow of Euyll Maryage,—see p. 295 of Poems 
of Walter Mapes, Camden Soc., 1841. The prose transl. of the Pilgrimage of the Soul 
is frequently assigned to Lydgate, see Schick’s ed. of the Temple of Glass, p. ci; and 
this very dubious assignment is sanctioned by the New Eng. Dict. Other minor ascrip- 
tions are made by fifteenth-century scribes, and a major one by Henry Peachan, who 
in 1622 announced that Lydgate “wrote that bitter Satyre of Peirs Plowman”. Ritson’s 
pseudo-bibliography has been torn to pieces by Schick as cited, and the Canon-essay of 
MacCracken does not classify Lydgate’s works with regard to the quality of evidence 
for the monk’s authorship. 


THE CHURL AND THE BIRD 


The Churl and the Bird was one of the most popular of Lydgate’s shorter 
poems, and is among the eight works attributed to him by Hawes in his Pastime 
of Pleasure; see p. 281 here. It was printed by Caxton twice, by de Worde, by 
Copland, and by Pynson. Its exact source has not been identified; the French 
“paunflete” which Lydgate mentions in line 35 would hardly have been the long 
narrative compilation of Petrus Alfonsus’ Disciplina Clericalis in its French ren- 
dering Le Castoiement d’un Pére a son Fils, but some perhaps separate version 
of the single tale which it contains on this subject. The Castoiement’s recension 
of our story, which is nearer the English than is any other of the French ver- 
sions, mentions a peasant as owner of the garden, describes the song of the bird, 
its capture, and the dialogue leading to its release; it presents the three “wis- 
doms” as: 1) que tu ne creies pas A toz les diz que tu orras, 2) que tu avras Ce 
que toen ert ja ni faudras, 3) que ne deiz pas plorer Ne ne te deiz desconforter 
Se perdue as aucune rien—The churl’s despair is then described, the bird’s 
reproof given, and the bird departs. See the poem (156 lines) as printed in 
Labouderie’s ed. of the Disciplina, Paris, 1824, ii:130-36. This version, as ap- 
pears. is close to the English. 

Gaston Paris, in his Légendes du Moyen Age, essay on Le Lai d’Oiselet, 
prints and discusses a far fuller and more symmetrical French tale based on the 
same situation. In this version the garden depends for its existence upon the 
song of the bird, and although once the property of a chevalier, has now fallen 
into the hands of a “vilain”. The bird still sang in the garden her wonderful 
song, which was of duty to God, and that God and love are one, and that love 
is supported by loyalty, courtesy, and honor. As the bird sings she sees the 
listening churl, who is evil-minded and covetous; and therefore she pours out 
praises of her former hearers, the noble knights and ladies. This incenses the 
churl, who snares the bird. The story then continues as here, with the added 
detail that the churl scorns the bird’s three “wisdoms’’, and declares he is not 
so stupid as to need them. The rest of the narrative is as here, except that when 
the bird departs the beauty of the garden disappears, the streams and trees dry 
up, and the churl loses his all. This version may also be read in Barbazan and 
Méon’s Fabliaux, iii:114; although such a developed tale bears no relation to 
Lydgate’s source, it is interesting to note that when Elias Ashmole reprinted our 
poem in his Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum in 1652, he drew from it a “para- 
bolicall and allusive interpretation”—although an alchemical one. 

The date of the English rendering is uncertain. It has been suggested by 
Schick, page c of his edition of the Temple of Glass, that the translation was 
executed before the death of Chaucer, the allusion to “my maister” in line 380 
being taken to mean Chaucer. But the argument is of doubtful validity. From 
the phrasing and movement of the poem we may, however, be inclined to place 
it early in Lydgate’s career; for it is much fresher and lighter than is, e.g., the 
fable of the Cock and Precious Stone, where the narrative is very poorly 
managed. Both this poem and Bycorne and Chichevache seem to us early just 
because of this (comparative) freshness of handling; or it may be that the 
choice of models in them is fortunate, for Lydgate and for us, since their con- 


[ 102 ] 


THE CHURL AND THE BIRD 103 


nection with the Manciple’s tale or with the Clerk’s envoy stimulates the modern 
reader’s interest. 

My text is in the main from MS Longleat 258, of the Marquess of Bath’s 
library, for the use of which I am indebted to the present Lord Bath. Other 
copies are in Brit. Mus. Harley 116, Cotton Caligula A ii, Lansdowne 699; 
in Lansdowne’s partial sister Leyden Vossianus 9; in Hh iv, 12 and Kk i, 6 of 
the University Library Cambridge; in Trin. Coll. Cambridge R 3, 19; in Balliol 
College Oxford, and a fragment in Christ Church College Oxford 152; in Lincoln 
Cathedral C 5,4; in a Gurney MS, in the Cardigan MS of the Canterbury Tales ; 
and in a Huth MS, now No. 144 of the Huntington Library, California. Halliwell 
in his edition of the Minor Poems printed the Harley 116 text, reprinted in 
Neilson and Webster’s Chief British Poets, p. 209. The second Caxton was re- 
printed for the Roxburghe Club in 1818, and the first Caxton (unique) was 
facsimiled in 1906 by the Cambridge University Press. 

As the MS Longleat 258 is in private possession and difficult of access, I 
describe it in some detail. It is of 147 leaves 854 by 5% inches in size, mainly 
in eights, paper quires in vellum covers. It is written in one small legible cur- 
rent hand, evenly but not handsomely, three spaced stanzas to the page, without 
ornament. The titles of the poems are usually in colophons; a slovenly later 
hand has put in running titles. An inserted note by Henry Bradshaw discusses 
the loss of the fifth and sixth quires, with which went the whole of the Flower 
and Leaf and the first six stanzas of Chaucer’s Mars. A contemporary table 
of contents on the last verso shows that the volume also once contained, at the 
beginning, the Letter of Cupid and “Vnum Carmen”. This table is printed in 
Chaucer Soc. Odd Texts, p. 251, and also in ModLangNotes 20:77, where I de- 
scribed the MS. The contents are :— 


1-32a, the Temple of Glass. Most of 32a was blank, and three stanzas were later written 
there, perhaps by Sir John Thynne, an early owner. These stanzas are printed, 
from MS B. M. Adds. 17942, by Fligel, Neuengl. Lesebuch 39. Fol. 32b is 
blank. See Schick’s ed. of the Temple of Glass, EETS 1891. 
(Two eights are missing) 


49a-54b, Chaucer’s Mars, impf. at beginning. Printed Chaucer Soc. SPT, p. 141. 

55a-57b, Chaucer’s Pity. Printed Chaucer Soc. Odd Texts, p. 251. 

58a-75b, the Assembly of Ladies. This text not noted by Skeat, vii:380 ff. 

76a-84a, Chaucer’s Anelida. Printed Chaucer Soc. SPT 37. Fol. 84b is blank. 

85a-101a, Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules. Printed Chaucer Soc. SPT, p. 1. Fol. 101b is 
blank. 

102a-119a, the Eye and the Heart. Printed Anglia 34:235-265. Most of 119a and 
all 119b are blank. 

120a-136b, La Belle Dame sans Merci, by Ros. This text not noted by Skeat, vii: 299. 
See my Manual, pp. 432-33. 

137a-147a, the Churl and the Bird. Text here printed. Fol. 145b and all of 146 are 
blank; the last stanza of the poem, on 147a, is written by the usual scribe, but the 
three stanzas on 145a, i.e., 46, 47, and 48, are in the later hand of the codex, 
while the last gathering of the MS has nine paper leaves instead of the usual 
six. Two stanzas, 49 and 50, are lacking to the poem, as also in the Balliol copy. 
It seems probable that the scribe had an imperfect copy before him, recognized 
it as such, and enlarged his final quire to permit addition later, putting his 


104 JOHN LYDGATE 


last stanza after his estimated space to make it clear that more text was to come. 
Whatever copy the later scribe then found was short two stanzas, as is Balliol, 
Cf. p. 336 of my Manual for the procedure of the Fairfax and the Bodley MSS 
in the Book of the Duchesse under, similar conditions. 


Stanzas 49 and 50, missing from Longleat and from Balliol, are here sup- 
plied from MS Lincoln Cathedral C 5, 4. This MS, a damaged and somewhat 
mutilated volume of 86 paper leaves, contains but four entries, viz.: Lydgate’s 
St. Albon and St. Amphabell, impf. at beginning and at close; the Churl and 
Bird, lacking 8 stanzas at beginning; Lydgate’s St. Austin at Compton; and his 
Dance Macabre. These three latter poems appear in MS Lansdowne 699 in the 
same order and with the same headings; and the Dance Macabre text in both 
MSS is of the same recension, and closely similar. Could the codices be laid 
side by side, it might even appear that the writing was identical; so far as my 
visual memory served, the hands were not unlike. 

In the Longleat MS a hand other than the scribe’s has made some correc- 
tions; see lines 76, 225, 266, 280, 305, 306, in the footnotes. Special textual dif- 
ferences among the MSS are dealt with in the Notes; see lines 1, 51, 76, 115, 177, 


Zl0V227, 352, 300-7. 


Problemes of olde likenes and figures 
Whiche proued ben ful fructuous of 
sentence 
And han auctorite grounded on scriptures 
By resemblaunce of notable Apparence 
With moralite concluding on prudence 5 
Like as the Bibyll rehersith by writyng 
Howe trees sumtyme chose heim self a 
king 


ffirst in thair chois they named the Olyve 
To reigne amonge heim Judicum doth ex- 
presse 

But he himself gan excusyn blyue 10 
That he might not forsake his fatenesse 
Ner the ffigge tre his amerous swetnesse 
Ner the vyne his holsom fressh tarage 

Whiche yevith comfort vnto almaner age 


3 

And sembla(b)ly Poetes Laureate 15 
By derke parables ful convenyent 

ffayn that birddes and bestes of estate 
As Roial Egles and lyons of assent 

Sent out writes to holde a perlament 
And made decrees brevely for to saye 
Summe to haue lordship and summe to 

obaye 


2, 11. Only Longleat has ful, that. 
4. Harl. and Kk have nobill inst. of notable. 
17. Other MSS ffeyne, ffeynyn. 


4 
Egles in the eyre highest take hir flight 
Power of lyons on the grounde is sene 
Cedre amonge trees highest is of sight 
And the laurer of nature (is) ay grene 25 
Of floures al flora goddes and quene 
Thus (of) al thinges there ben diver- 

sites 

Summe of estat and summe of low degres 


5 
Poites written wonderful liknesse 
And vnder couert kepe heim self ful 
cloos 30 
They take bestes and foules to witnesse 
Of whois fe(y)nynges fables first aroos 
And here I cast vnto my purpose 
Oute of the frenssh a tale to translate 
Whiche in a paunflete I red and saw but 
late 35 
6 
This tale whiche I make of mencion 
In gros rehersith by writing thaire 
Thre proverbes paied for the raunson 
Of a faire brid that was take in a snare 
Wondre desirous to scape oute of hir 
care 40 
Of myn auctorite folowing the processe 
So as it fil in ordre I shal expresse 


22. Other MSS to take: note the infinitives of 20, 
21 


2a ih. Longleat omits is, of. 
41. Other MSS auctor inst. of auctorite. 


THE CHURL AND THE BIRD 105 


Whilom there was in a smal vilage 

As myn auctour maketh rehersayl 

A chorle whiche hade lust and gret 
corage 45 

Within him self by deligent trauayl 

Taraye his gardyne with notable ap- 
perayl 

Of leng(t)h and brede elich square and 
longe 

Hegged and diched to make it sure and 
stronge 


Alle the aleys were made playne with 


sonde 50 
The benches couerd with new turvys 
grene 


Swete herbes with condites at honde 

That welled vp ayenst the sonne shene 

Like siluer stremes as any cristal clene 

The burbly wawes (in ther) vp boyl- 
ling 55 

Rounde as birall thair stremes out shew- 
ing 


9 
Amyd the gardyn stode a fressh laurere 
Thereon a birde synging day and nyght 
With sonnysh feders brighter then gold 
were 
Whiche with hir song made hevy hertes 
light 60 
That to be holde it was an heuenly sight 
Howe towarde even and day dawynge 
She dud hir payne moost amorously to 
singe 
10 
Esperus enforced hir corage 
Towarde even whan Phebus gan to 
(w )est 65 
Amonge the braunches to hir avauntage 
To singe hir complaynt and than to go to 
rest 
And at the rising of the quene Alcest 
To synge ayein as it was to hir dewe 
Erly on morowe the day sterre to sa- 
lewe 70 
il 
It was a verrey hevenly melodye 
Evyn and morowe to here the briddes 
song 


55. Other MSS have in ther before vp. Harl. has 


in. 

62. Other MSS and in the dawnynge. 

65. Longleat reads gan to rest. 

67. Other MSS, except Hh, read complyn inst. 
of complaynt. 


And the swete sugred Armonye 

Of vncouth warbles and tewnes draw 
along 

That al the gardyn of the noys rong 75 

(Tyl) on (a) morowe that Tytan shone 
ful clere 

The bride was trapped and taken in a 
pantere 


12 

The chorle was glad that he this bride 

had take 
Mery of chere of loke and of visage 
And in al hast he cast for to make 80 
Within his hous a praty litel cage 
And with hir song to reioyse his corage 
Tyll at the last the cely bride abrayde 
And sobirly thus to the chorle she saiede 


13 
I am now take and stand vnder daun- 
gire 85 
Holde straite that I may not flee 
A dewe my songe wt al my notes clere 
Nowe that I haue lost my liberte 
Now am I thral and summe tyme I was 


free 
And trust well while I stond in dis- 
tresse 90 


' I can not syng ner make noo gladnesse 


14 
And though my cage forged were of gold 
And the penacles of byral and cristal 
I remembre a proverbe said of olde 
Who lesith his fredome in faith he lesith 
al 95 
ffor I had leuer vpon a branche smal 
Merely to singe amonge the wodes grene 
Thenne in a cage of siluer bright and 
shene 


5 
Songe and prison han noon accordaunce 
Trowest thou I wol synge in prisoun 
Songe procedith of Ioye and of pleas- 
aunce 
And prison causith deth and distruc- 
cioun 
Rynging of fetters make noo mery sou 
Howe shuld he be glad or Iocunde 
Ayeinst his wille that lithe in chaynes 
bounde 105 


76. Longleat has been corrected; see Note. 
90. while, Harl, Trin.; now, Linc, Lansd. Kk. 
104. Other MSS read Or howe shuld, etc. 


106 JOHN LYDGATE 


16 
What availith a lion to be kyng 
Of bestes al shet in a Tour of stoon 
Or an egle vnder streit kepyng 
Called also kyng of foules echoon 
ffye on lordship when liberte is goon 110 
Answere hereto and lete it not asterte 
Who singith mery that singith not in 

herte 

17 
But if thou wilt rejoys of my singyng 
Lette me goo flee fre from al daunger 
And euery day in the mornyng II5 
I wil repair vnto thy laurer 
And fresshely syng wt lusty notes cler 
Vndre thy chambre and afore thy halle 
Euery season whan thou list me calle 


18 
To be shitt vp and pynned vndre 
drede 120 
Noo thing accordith vnto my nature 
Though I were fedde wt mylke & wastel 
brede 
And swete cruddes brought to my pasture 
Yet had I leuer to doo my besy cure 
Erly in the morowe to (shrape) in the 


vale 125 
To fynde my dyner amonge the wormes 
smale 
19 


The labourer is gladder at the plough 

Erly on the morowe to fede him on 
bacoun 

Than som man is that hath tresour 
ynough 

And of al deyntes plente and foyson 130 

And hath noo fredom with his posses- 
sion 

‘To goo at large but as a bere at the 
stake 

‘To passe his boundis but if he leve take 


20 
‘Take this answere ful for conclusion 
‘To synge in prison thou shalt me not 
constrayn I35 
‘Tyll I haue liberte in woddes vp and doon 
To fleen at large on bowghes rough & 
playn 
And of reason thou shuldest not disdayn 


109, 112. Other MSS read euerichoon, of herte. 

115. See Note. 

125. sharpe has been emended to scrape; other 

{ MSS. _shrape. 

134. Trin, Harl. for ful; Linc, Lansd, Hh, for a 
full. 


Of my desires but laugh and haue good 


game 
But who is a chorle wold eche man were 
pe same 140 


21 

Welle quod the chorle / sith it wol not be 

That I desire / as by thyn talkynge 

Maugre thyn hede / thou shalt chese oon 
of thre 

Within a cage merely to synge 

Or to the kechyn I shal thy body 
brynge 145 

Pul thy feders that ben so bright and 
clere 

And after rost the / or bake the to my 
dynere 


22 
Thenne quod the Bride to reason say not 
nay 
Toching my songe / a ful answere thou 
hast 
And when my feders pulled ben away 150 
If I be rosted other bake in past 
Thou shalt haue of me a ful smal repast 
But if thou wilt werke be my counsaille 
Thou maist be me haue passing gret 
availle 


23 

If thou wilt vnto my rede assent 155 
And suffre me goo / frely from prison 
Withoute raunsoun / or any other rent 
I shal the yeve / a notable gwerdoun 
Thre gret wisdomes according to reason 
More of value take hede what I prof- 

fre 160 
Than al the gold / that shitt is in thy 

cofre 


24 
Trust me wel / I shal the not disceyue 
Welle quod the chorle telle on anoon lete 


se 

Nay quod the bride thou maist aforne 
conceyue 

Who that shal teche / of reason he must 
goo fre 165 


It sitt a maistre / to haue his liberte 
And at large to teche his lessoun 


147. Trin, Hh omit first the; Linc, Lansd, omit 
both. Harl reads—the rooste and baake, 
etc. 

148. Longleat inserts I before say; Lansd and 
Calig insert IJ before nay. 

152. Other MSS of me haue. 

160. Other MSS I do profre. 

164. Other MSS thou must afore, etc. 


THE CHURL AND THE BIRD 107 


Haue me not suspecte I meane noo 
tresoun 
25 
Welle quod the chorle I holde me content 
I trust thy promyse / which thou hast 


made to me 170 
The bride fligh forth the chorle was of 
assent 


And toke hi(r) flight vp to the laurer tre 

Then thought she thus / now that I 
stande fre 

With snares panters I cast not al my 
lyve 

Ner with noo lyme twigges any more to 
stryve 175 

26 
He is a foole that scaped is daungere 
Hath broken his (fetters) & fled is from 


prison 

That wol resort for brent childe dredith 
fere 

Eche man be ware of wisdome and rea- 
son 

Of Sugre strawed that hidith fals poi- 
son 180 

There is noo more perlious venom of 
sharpnesse 

Than when it hath of treacle a likenesse 


27 
Who dredith noo perel in perell he shal 
falle 
Smothe waters ben ofte sithes depe 
The quayle pipe can moost falsly 


calle 185 
Tylle the quayle vndre the net doth 
creepe 
A blere eyed fouler trust not though he 


wepe 

Eschewe his thombe of weping take noon 
hede 

That smale briddis can nype by the hede 


28 

And now that I suche daungier am as- 
kaped 190 

I wol be ware and afore prouide 

That of noo fouler I wol no more be 
laped 

ffrom thaire lyme twigges I wol fle fer 
aside 

Where perel is / (gret) perel is to abide 

172. Longleat his, altered by corrector. 

177. Longleat feders; see Note. 


194, 197, 202. Longleat omits gret, inserts thou, 
inserts second of. 


Come nere thou chorle take hede to my 
speche 195 
Of thre wisdomes that I wol the teche 


29 
Yeue thou not of wisdome to haste cre- 
dence 
To euery tale ner to eche tything 
But considre of reason and prudence 
Amonge many tales / is many loude 
lesing 200 
Hasty credence causith gret hinderyng 
Report of tales and tythinges brought vp 
of new 
Maketh many man to be holde vntrew 


30 
ffor oo party take this for my raunsoun 
Lerne the secunde grounded on scrip- 
ture 205 
Desire thou not / by noo condicioun 
Thing that is impossible to recure 
Worldly desire stondith al in aventure 
And who desireth to clymbe to high on 
loft 
By souden turne he falleth oft vnsoft 


31 

The threde is this / be warre both evyn 
& morowe 

fforgete it not / but lerne this of me 

ffor tresour lost / make neuer to gret 
sorowe 

Whiche in noo wise / may recouerde be 

ffor who taketh sorow / for losse in that 
degre 215 

Rekyn first his losse / and after rekyn 
his payne 

Of oo sorowe he maketh sorowes twayne 


32 
After this lessoun / the bride began a 
song 
Of hir eschape gretly reioysing 210 
And she remembring also of the wrong 
Don by the chorle / first at hir taking 
Of hir affray / and of hir prisonyng 
Glad that she was at large and oute of 
drede 
Saide vnto him howyng aboue his hede 


33 
Thou were quod (she) a verrey natural 
foole_ . 225 


200. Other MSS gret# inst. of loude. 

201. Other MSS hath causid inst. of causith. 
210, 227. See Notes. 

221. Longleat reads Down by, etc. 

225. The corrector of Longleat inserts she. 


108 JOHN LYDGATE 


To suffre me depart / of thy lewdenesse 

Thou augtest of right complayne & to 
make dole 

And in thyn hert / haue gret heuynesse 

That thou hast lost so passing gret 


rychesse 
Whiche might haue sufficed by value of 
rekenyng 230 
To pay the raunsoun of a mighty kyng 


34 

There is a stone whiche called is Iagounce 
Of olde engendred within myn entrayle 
Whiche of fyne gold peysith a gret vnce 
Citheryn of colour like garnettes of 

entayle 235 
Whiche maketh men victorious in batayle 
And who so euer bere on him this stone 
Is fully assured ayeinst his mortal foone 


35 
Who hath this stone / in possessioun 
Shal suffre noo pouert / ner noon indi- 
gence 240 
But of plente haue tresour and foysoun 
And euery man shal doo him reuerence 
And noon enemy shal doo him offence 
But fro thyn handes now that I am goon 
Playne if thou wilt (for) thy part is 
noon 245 
36 
It causith loue it maketh men gracious 
And fauourable in every man is sight 
It makith accorde betwix folke envyous 
Comfortith sorowful / and makith heuy 
hertes light 
Like Topasion of coloure sonnysh 
bright 250 
I am a fole to telle alle at ones 
Or teche a chorle the prise cf precious 


stones 
37, 
Men shulde not put a precious Marga- 
rete 


As Rubeis Sapheres / or other stones 
ynde 

Emeraudes ner rounde perles white 255 

To forne rude swyne / that loue draff 
of kinde 

ffor a Sowe dili(ti)th as I fynde 

More in foule draff / hir pigges for to 
glade 


245. Longleat omits for. 
249. Harl, Hh, Calig, also have and; not in other 
texts. 


Then in al the perry / that cometh of 
garnade 
38 


Eche thing draweth to his semblable 

ffisshe in the see / bestes on the stronde 

The eyre for foules of nature is conven- 
able 

To a plough man for to till the lande 

And to a chorle a muke forke in his 
hande 


I lese my tyme any more to tary 265 
To telle a boyuer of a lapidary 
39 


That thou haddest / thou getest nomore 
agayne 

Thy lyme twigges and panters I defye 

To lete me goo thou were foule ouer- 
sayne 

To lese thy richesse only of folye 270 

I am now fre to sing / and for to flye 

Where that me list / and he is a fole at al 

That goth at large / and maketh him self 
thral 


40 
To here of wisdome thyn eres ben half 
defe 
Like an Asse that listith on an harpe 275 
Thou maist goo pipe in an hyvye lefe 
Better is to me to sing / on thornes 
sharpe 
Than in a Cage with a Carle to carpe 
ffor it was saide of folkes yore agoon 
A Chorles (thralle) is alwey woo begoon 


41 . 
The chorle felt his hert part on twayn 
ffor verrey sorowe / and a sondre ryve 
Alas quod he I may well wepe and playn 
As a wreche neuer like to thryve 
But forto endure in pouert al my lyve 285 
ffor of foly / and of wilfulnesse 
I haue now loste al holy my richesse 


42 
I was a lord I crye oute on fortune 
Hade gret tresour late in my keping 
Whiche might haue made me long to 
(contune ) 290 


259. Other MSS, except Lansd, have oute of 
garnade. 

260. Harl, Linc, Lansd, Hh, wnto. 

266. Lansd, Hh, Calig, read chorl inst. of boveer. 
and the corrector of Longleat has written 
chorl above boyuer. 

280. The Lt. corrector writes thralle above chorle. 
Linc, Lansd, Harl, Trin, have cherl, 
wyfe. 

290. Lt. writes contynue, other MSS contune. 


THE CHURL AND THE BIRD 109 


With thilke stone to haue lyued like a 


kyng 
If that I hade sett it in a ryng 
Borne it vpon me I had hade good ynough 
I shulde no more haue goon ynto the 
plough 


43 
Whenne the Bride sawe the chorle thus 
morne 295 
And how that he was heuy of his 
c(h)ere 
She toke hir flight / and gan ayein 
retorne 


Towarde him / and said as ye shal here 
O dulle Chorle wisdomes for to lere 
That I the taught al is left behinde 300 
Raced awey / and clene oute of thy 
mynde 
44 
Taught I the not this wisdome in sen- 
tence 
To euery tale brought vp to the of newe 
Not to hastly to yeue therto credence 
Vnto tyme thou knew that (it) were 
trewe 305 
Alle is not gold that (sheweth) goldissh 
hewe 
Ner stoones al by nature as I fynde 
Be not Saphers / that shewen colour 
ynde 
45 
In this doctryne I lost al my laboure 
To teche the suche prouerbes of sub- 


staunce 310 
Now maist thou see thyn lewde blynde 
erroure 


ffor al my body peysed in balaunce 

Weyeth not an vnce rude is thy remem- 
braunce 

I to haue more peyce in myn entrayle 

Then al my body sett for countervayle 


46 
Alle my body wey(e)th not an vnce 
Howe might then I haue in me a stone 
That peyseth more than doith a gret 
Tagonce 
Thy brayne is dulle / thy witte is almost 
goone 
Of thre wisdomes thou hast forgoten 
oone 320 
296. Lt reads clere inst. of chere. 
305. The corrector inserts it. 
306. The corrector writes sheweth over shyneth. 


309. No other MS has al. 
315. Other MSS countertayle. 


Thou shuldest not after my sentence 
To euery tale yeue hasty credence 


I bad also be warre (both) even and 
morowe 

ffor thing lost / of sodeyne aventure 

Thou shuldest neuer make to muche 
sorowe 325 

When thou seist / thou maist not it recure 

Here thou failist / whiche doth thy besy 
cure 

In thy snare to cache me ayeine 

Thou art a fole thy labour is in vayne 


48 
In the threde thou doost also rave 330 
I bad thou shuldest in noo manere wise 
Coueyt thing / whiche thou maist not 
haue 
In whiche thou hast forgote my enprise 
That I may sey plainly to deuise 
Thou hast of madenesse forgeten al 
thre 335 
Notable wisdomes / that I taught the 


49 
It wer but foly / mor with the to carpe 
Or to preche / of wisdamys more or lasse 
I hold hym mad / that bryngeth forth 
his harpe 
Ther on to teche / a rude fordullid 


Asse 340 
And mad is he / that syngeth a fool a 
masse 
And he most mad / that doth his besy- 
nesse 
To teche a cherl / termys of gentilesse 
50 


And semblably / in Aprill & in May 

When gentil briddis most make mello- 
dye 345 

The cokkow syngen can but oo lay 

In othir tunys / she hath no, fantasye 

Thus euery thyng / as clerkis specefye 

ffrut on trees / & folk of euery age 

ffro whens thei cam / thei take a 


tarage 350 
51 
The Vynteneer tretith / of his holsom 
vynes 


323. Longleat reads but, other MSS _ both. 
Stanzas 46, 47, 48, are in later hand; see 
introd. to this poem. 

Stanzas 49 and 50 are from the Lincoln 
Cathedral MS; see Introduction. 
346. Harl and Trin read can than but, etc. 


110 JOHN LYDGATE 


Off gentil frut / bostith eek the garden- 
eer 

The ffissher cast / his hookis & his lynes 

To cachche ffissh / in euery fressh ryveer 

Off tilthe of lond / tretith the boveer 355 

The gentylman talkythe of genterye 

The cherl deliteth / to speke of ribaudye 


52 

All oon to the a facoun & a kite 

As good an owle / as a Popyngay 

A dongel doke / as deynte as a snyte 360 

Who serueth a cherl / hath many a car- 
ful day 

Adieu sir cherl farweel I flye my way 

I cast me nevir / hen(s)forth my 
lyvyng 

Afforn a cherl / any mor to synge 


53 
Verba auctoris 
Ye folk that shal this fable seen & 
reede 365 
Newe forgid talis / I counsell you to 
flee 
ffor los of good / takith nat to gret heede 


352. Other MSS, except Linc and Hh, have not 
eek, 
356-7. See Notes. 


Beeth nat to sorweful for noon aduersite 

Coueiteth nat thyng that may nat be 

And remembrith wher evir that ye 
gon 370 

A cherlis thrale / is alway woo begon 


54 


Vnto purpos / this proverbe is ful riff 

Rad & reportid / bi old remembrance 

A childis bird / & a knavis wiff 

Haue ofte sith / gret sorwe & mys- 
chance 375 

Who hath freedam / hath al suffisance 

Bett is freedam with litil in gladnesse 

Than to be thral in all wordly richesse 


55 
Lenvoye 


Goo litil quayeer & recomende me 

Vnto my maistir / with humble affec- 
cion 380 

Beseche hym lowly / of mercy & pite 

Off thi rude makyng / to haue compas- 
sion 

And as touchyng / thi translacion 

Out of the frenssh / how euer the 
ynglissh be 

All thyng is seyd / vndir correccion 385 

With supportacion of your benygnyte 


366. Harl and Hh as here; Linc, Lansd, have 
concetleth inst. of I counsell. 


Explicit fabula de Aue & Rustico 


HORNS AWAY 


When Anne of Bohemia came to England in 1381 to marry Richard II, she 
brought with her, says Miss Strickland in her Queens of England, three fashions 
previously unfamiliar to Englishwomen. One was the use of pins, as we know 
them; another was the sidesaddle; the third was the high forked headdress or 
horned cap. “This cap,” continues Miss Strickland, “was at least two feet in 
height, and as many in width; its fabric was built of wire and pasteboard, like 
a very widespreading mitre, and over these horns was extended glittering tissue 
or gauze. Monstrous and outrageous were the horned caps that reared their 
heads in England directly the royal bride appeared in one.” 

It was an age of extravagance in dress, not only in the use of costly ma- 
terials, but in the cut and trimming of all garments. Richard II and his un- 
worthy favorites excited the anger and contempt of the people by the fanciful 
absurdity of their clothes. The anonymous play known as the Woodstock Play,! 
which praises “plain Thomas” duke of Gloucester, in contrast to the foolish 
prodigality of the king, has several scenes deriding the “wyld and antick habits” 
of the courtiers. Among the fashions held up to laughter are the high pointed 


* Printed in Jahrb. der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft 35:3-121 (1899). 


HORNS AWAY 111 


shoes, connected with the hose by chains, or as the play has it, “a kynd coherence 
twixt the tooe and knee”. There are also mentioned Italian cloaks and Spanish 
hats, their plumed tops “waving a cubit high above their wanton heads”. See the 
“hygh cappis wytlesse” and “long peked schone” mentioned in a ballad printed by 
Wright, Political Poems, ii:251; and cf. notes here on Barclay’s Ship of Fools, 
lines 456, 8479-85, where the English Acts of Apparel are cited. See also Hoc- 
cleve’s Regement of Princes, 421-546, and the description of the Lombard kings 
in the Fall of Princes, ix :838 ff. 

Women’s headgear was as extravagant as men’s. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath 
wore to church kerchiefs weighing ten pounds; Piers Plowman’s peasant is 
warned by Reason that he should not let his wife’s head cost half a mark.t When 
the horned headdress was succeeded by the steepleshaped, expenditure was in 
nowise decreased, for jewels and long silk veils were added. See the headdresses 
reproduced in Shaw’s Dresses and Decorations, ii, from MS Harley 6431, where 
Christine de Pisan presents a poem to Queen Isabella of France; and see ibid. 
from MS Royal 18 E ii (a Froissart MS) showing a masque before Charles VI 
of France; see also ibid., the portrait of Constance, wife of John of Gaunt, 
wearing the horned headdress. Fairholt in his Costume in England has many 
small outline cuts taken from manuscript; this poem is cited p. 148 of his 
1860 edition. 

Horned headgear was also common, and derided, in France at an earlier 
date; see the Dit des Cornetes in Jubinal’s Jongleurs et Trouvéres, p. 87, re- 
produced by Fairholt in Satirical Songs, p. 29; see La Contenance des Femmes 
in Jubinal’s Nouveau Recueil, pp. 174-5; see the Roman de la Rose 13500-03, 
ed. Méon, i1:338. 

The fashion persisted long in England; see Elmham’s Liber Metricus, where 
the author remarks of the crowds assembled to see Henry V pass,— 


Quaeque fenestra nitet 
Vultibus ornatis, utinam sine cornubus! illic 
Erexit cornu nobis Deus ipse salutis: 
Hine confringantur cornua fulta malis. 


Lydgate mentions the horned caps several times; in Reason and Sens 6565 he 
says that good women “‘dedely haten highe crestys And to be hornyd lych as bestys.” 
In the Fall of Princes, ii:4231-2, he implies the same thing; in the golden world 
(tbid. iii:3158) “Women that age farsid were nor hornyd”; and again, vii:1206, 
“Of hornyd beestis no boost was then Iblowe.” 

This “high style’ changed in Henry VII’s time to a low flat cap, with the 
same suddenness and completeness as did the style of hair, of sleeves, and of shoes. 
Manuscripts of the poem are:—Bodl. Laud 683, printed Relig. Antiq. i:79, pr. by 

Halliwell, p. 46, by Fairholt in his Satirical Songs, 1849, p. 51—Univ. Libr. 
Cambridge Hh iv, 12, printed EETS PolitReligLovePoems, 1903, p. 45, collated 
with Harley 2255; this text is repr. by Neilson and Webster, Chief British 
Poets, p. 222, from the earlier EETS ed. of 1893.—Harley 2255, printed in 
Nicolas’ Chronicle of London, 1827, p. 270, and here.—Jesus Coll. Cambr. 56.— 
Bodl. Rawl. C 86.—Trin.Coll.Cambr R 3, 19.—Bodl. Ashmole 59 is a corrupt 
and careless text.—Harley 2251 and Adds. 34360, sister texts, are of four stanzas 
eee cea inclusion of Leyden Vossianus 9 in the list I do not find 
justified. 


*B-text, passus v, line 31. 


112 JOHN LYDGATE 


[MS Brit. Mus. Harley 2255, fol. 6] 


Off god and kynde / procedith al bewte 
Crafft may shewe / a foreyn apparence 
But nature ay must haue be souereynte 
Thyng countirfet / hath noon existence 
Twen gold and gossomer is gret differ- 
ence 5 
Trewe metal / requerith noon allay 
Vnto purpoos / by cleer experyence 
Bewte wyl shewe / thouh hornes wer 
away 


Riche attires / of gold and perre 
Charbonclis rubies / of moost excel- 
lence 10 
Shewe in dirknesse / liht wher so they be 
By ther natural / heuenly influence 
Doubletys of glas / yeve a gret evidence 
Thyng countirfet / wil faylen at assay 
On this mateer / concludyng in sen- 
tence 5 
Bewte wyl shewe / thouh hornys wer 
away 


3 
Aleyn remembryth / his compleynt who 
lyst see 
In his book / of famous eloquence 
Clad al in floures / and blosmys of a 


tree 
He sawh nature / in hir moost excel- 
lence 20 


Vpon hir hed a keuerchef of Valence 
Noon othir richesse / of countirfet array 
Texemplefye / by kyndly providence 
Bewte wil shewe / thouh hornys wer 


away 
4 
ffamous poetys of antiquyte 25 
In Grece and Troye renoumyd of pru- 
dence 


Wroot of queen Heleyne / and Penelope 
Off Polyceene / with hir chaast Inno- 


cence 

ffor wyves trewe / calle Lucrece to pre- 
sence 

That they wer fayr / ther can no man 
sey nay 30 


Kynde wrouht hem / with so gret dilli- 
gence 


On the MS see p. 79 ante note. This poem 
is a tour de force on three rimes; for Lydgate’s 
most extensive case of this “‘rhetorical color’ see 
Rome Remember, p. 169 below. 


Ther bewte couthe / hornys wer cast 
away 
5 


Clerkys recorde / by gret auctorite 
Hornys wer yove / to beestys for dif- 
fence 

A thyng contrary / to ffemynyte 35 
To be maad sturdy / of resistence 

But arche wyves egre in ther violence 
ffers as Tygre for to make affray 

They haue despyt / and ageyn con- 


science 
Lyst nat of pryde / ther hornys cast 
away 40 
6 
Lenvoye 


Noble pryncessys / this litel shoort ditee 
Rewdly compiled / lat it be noon offence 
To your womanly / merciful pitee 
Thouh it be rad / in your audience 
Peysed ech thyng / in your iust aduer- 
tence 45 
So it be no displeasaunce to your pay 
Vndir support / of your pacience 
Yeuyth example hornys to cast away 


7 

Grettest of vertues / is humylite 

As Salomon seith / sone of Sapience 

Moost was acceptyd / to the deite 

Takith heed heer of / yevyth to this 
woord credence 

How Maria / which hadde a premynence 

Above alle women / in bedleem whan she 
lay 

At cristes birthe / no cloth of gret dis- 
pence 35 

She weryd a keverche / hornys wer cast 
away 

8 

Off birthe she was hihest of degre 

To whom alle aungelis / did obedience 

Of Dauidis lyne / which sprang out of 
iesse 

In whom alle vertues / by iust conven- 
ience 60 

Maad stable in god / by goostly confi- 
dence 

This roose of Jerycho / ther greuh noon 
suych in May 

Poor in spirit / parfight in pacience 

In whoom alle hornys of pryde were put 
away 


BYCORNE AND CHICHEVACHE 113 


9 
Mooder of Ihesu / myrour of chastite 65 
In woord nor thouht / that nevir did 
offence 
Trewe examplaire / of Virginitie 
Heedspryng and welle / of parfit conty- 
nence 


Was nevir clerk / by rethoryk nor science 

Kowde all hir vertues / reherse to this 
day 70 

Noble Pryncessys / of meeke benyuo- 
lence 

Bexample of hir / your horns cast away 


Explicit 


BYCORNE AND CHICHEVACHE 


The immediate original of this poem, although not yet identified, was in 
all probability French. Texts of French poems on Bigorne and on Chicheface are 
printed by Montaiglon in his Recueil as below, ii:187 and xi:277; both are in 
nine-line stanzas, alternate speeches by beast and by victim. Neither of these 
texts is earlier than the mid-sixteenth century, nor are the closely similar French 
versions printed by Bolte in Archiv 114:80 ff. But Chicheface, the “beste maigre” 
who devours the meek-spirited, is alluded to in the French fifteenth-century Mys- 
tere de Ste. Genevieve, as if well-known; see Jubinal’s edition as below, i:248. 
In a note ibid. i:390 Jubinal prints a poem of 68 lines, in couplets, on “Chinche- 
fache,’ from a French manuscript of the fourteenth century; and Chaucer, in 
the envoy to his Clerk’s Tale, warns wives against patience, “Lest Chichevache yow 
swolwe in hir entraille.’” It was thus a current allusion before the fifteenth 
century, 

The two names were originally Bigorne and Chi(n)chefache; and their 
coupling and contrast is a late medieval arrangement. The former word has 
not yet been explained etymologically, and is rare. Chicheface or Chinchefache 
is much the commoner of the two; the compound means “niggard-face”, and 
chinche or chynchy appears in Middle English as well as in French to mean 
“stingy, tight”; see, e.g., Hoccleve’s Male Regle, line 136. The French term 
is used to signify something like “scarecrow” in Martin Le Franc’s Champion 
de Dames (ca. 1440), where the Adversary declares that woman, “celle Ciche- 
face’, was made out of the leavings after man had been carefully created, just 
as a potter fashions a queer “marmouset” out of his clay remnants when the pot 
has been finished. A little earlier, in Baudet Herenc’s Doctrinal de la séconde 
rhétorique of 1432, the “sotte amoureuse” is indignantly termed by the versifier 
“le laide cicheface”; and in the fourteenth-century Lamentations de Mathéolus, 
iii :3220 ff., the poet says he is “comme une chicheface, Maigre par dessoubs ma 
peaucelle.” 

These are all general terms. But in the fourteenth-century lines De la 
Chinchefache printed by Jubinal (as below), there is described a lean horrible 
monster, long-toothed and staring-eyed, whose function is to seize and devour 
such women as do not “talk back” to their lords. And in the Ste. Genevieve 
drama above mentioned, the angry bourgeois says to the saint, who is counselling 
patience, “Gardez vous de la chicheface ; el vous mordra s’el vous encontre.”” Both 
these texts write the name with an f, and the former says nothing of any re- 
semblance between the monster and a cow; nor do most of the sixteenth-century 
pictures so represent Chichevache. That at the Chateau de Villeneuve has the 
body and head of a wolf, with horse’s hoofs behind and claws in front; in her 
huge jaws she holds a struggling woman in bourgeois dress. Other cuts show 


114 JOHN LYDGATE 


the creature horned, however, and Lydgate (see stanza 12) is explicit. Doubt- 
less as soon as the medial f was voiced enough to sound like vache, the legend 
responded. 

For Bycorne or Bigorne there is much less to be said. Perhaps the change 
of g to c, giving the word the apparent meaning of “two-horned”, followed the 
transmutation of Chichevache into a cow and the connection of the two beasts. 
There is a cow Bicorne in Nigel Wireker’s Speculum Stultorum, a twelfth- 
century Anglo-Latin satire; but she merely cuts off her tail in despair when it is 
frozen into the ice, and has no function as a peripatetic censor. Lydgate men- 
tions “Bycornys” in Troy Book ii:7702, with other woodland beings. The true 
French word bigorne meant either an iron-shod staff, or “argot”, according to 
Godefroy; the transference to signify a beast of folk-lore is not yet explained. 
At the Chateau de Villeneuve the creature is represented as shortlegged, scaly- 
backed, and with a human head, in the huge jaws of which a man has disappeared 
all but the arms. 

The use of verses to accompany tapestry or wall-paintings is an aspect of 
medieval art and letters not yet fully investigated. See Male’s L’art réligieux 
de la fin du moyen-age en France, Paris, 1908; see Jubinal, refs. of 1838 and 
1840 in list below; see a few notes by me in Englische Studien 43 :10-26, prefacing 
prints of two tapestry-poems by Lydgate. See the text of “Dames illustres 
qui ont esté Roynes”, stanzas written to accompany tapestries of eighteen queens, 
presented to Catherine de Médicis by their author, and at her bidding copied for 
Elizabeth of England. The transcript made for Elizabeth exists in Brit. Mus. 
Royal 20 A xx; see the 1921 catalogue of the Royal MSS. To some of its 
stanzas are prefixed directions for representing the figures; cf. Lydgate’s pro- 
cedure here. Stanzas painted, with their pictures, in the cloister of SS. Inno- 
cents at Paris served as Lydgate’s original for the Dance Macabre; and he may 
have obtained the French of this poem in a similar way. There are some verbal 
resemblances between his lines and the surviving French poems on Bigorne and 
on Chinchefache; but structurally the English is quite different. In Lydgate 
the two monsters are represented, in the same poem, as husband and wife, and 
the text is arranged to suit a series of pictures. 

The patient wife, and also the ungovernable wife, were stock subjects of 
medieval bourgeois narrative. Chaucer handled the former traditional theme, 
pitched in aristocratic key, in his Clerk’s Tale of Griselda; but in the Clerk’s 
envoy, so liberally used by Lydgate here, he adopted the bourgeois key. His 
Constance story, assigned to the Man of Law, is aristocratic in tone, with a few 
sly touches. Gower in his Constance-story, and Hoccleve in his tale of Jeres- 
laus’ Wife, are steadily aristocratic. Lydgate refers to Griselda here; and he 
refers to the Wife of Bath, Chaucer’s full-length study of the ungovernable wife, 
both here and in his Mumming at Hertford. This latter, printed in Anglia 
22 :364, and repr. by Neilson and Webster, p. 223, should be compared with this 
poem. 


Three texts of this poem are known to me. The first, in Trinity College Cam- 
bridge R 3, 20, is here reproduced; it was written by John Shirley, the contemporary 
of Lydgate and admirer of Chaucer,—see p. 192 here. Another copy is in Brit. Mus. 
Harley 2251, a codex which in this part of its contents is copied from the Trinity 
College volume, and which has therefore no independent value at this point. A third 
copy is in Trin. Coll. Cambridge R 3, 19. 


BYCORNE AND CHICHEVACHE LS 


The poem was printed, from Harley 2251, in vol. xii of Dodsley’s collection of 
old plays, eds. of 1780 and 1825-1827; and it was termed by Tyrwhitt, in his note on 
CantTales 9064, “a kind of pageant”. But in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1834 ii:43, 
Thomas Wright published a notice of the R 3, 20 copy, and called attention to the 
detailed heading by Shirley describing the poem as intended for wall-hangings. The 
text was accordingly not reprinted by Hazlitt in his 1874 reédition of Dodsley. It was 
again published from the Harley MS by Halliwell in his 1840 volume of Lydgate’s 
minor poems, p. 129; and that text was reprinted by Montaiglon in his Recueil xi :280-83. 
Montaiglon also printed, ibid. ii:193-6, a translation of Lydgate into French prose. The 
poem, from MS Harley but with spelling somewhat modernized, was included by Henry 
Morley in his Shorter English Poems (1876), pp. 54-56. Halliwell’s text was reprinted 
by Neilson and Webster, p. 220, with retention of Halliwell’s errors; see the notes on 
our text. 

SELECT REFERENCE LIST IV 


Montaiglon, Recueil de poésies frangoises des XVe et XVIe siécles, 13 vols., Paris, 
1855-78. 

Jubinal, Mystéres inédits du XVe siécle, 2 vols., Paris, 1837. 

Jubinal, Les anciennes tapisseries historiées, Paris, 1838. 

Jubinal, Récherches sur l’usage et l’origine des tapisseries a personnages, Paris, 1840. 

Le Franc, see dissertation by A. Piaget, Lausanne, 1888. Le Champion de Dames is 
discussed pp. 100-127; see pp. 111-12. 

Wireker’s Speculum Stultorum is ed. Th. Wright, Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the 
XII Century, Rolls Series, 1872, 2 vols.; see i:3 ff. 

Les Lamentations de Mathéolus et la Livre de Léesce de Jehan le Févre, ed. with Latin 
original by A. G. van Hamel, 2 vols, Paris, 1892, 1905. 

Langlois, ed. Recueil d’arts de séconde rhétorique, Paris, 1902, includes Baudet Herenc. 

Neilson and Webster, Chief British Poets of the XIV and XV Centuries, Boston, 1916. 


[MS Trinity College Cambridge R. 3, 20, p. 10] 


LOO SIRS pE DEUISE OF A PEYNTED OR DESTEYNED CLOTHE FOR AN HALLE . A PARLOUR . OR 


A CHAUMBRE DEUYSED BY JOHAN LIDEGATE AT pre REQUEST OF A WORPY 
CITESEYN OF LONDOUN 


first ere shal O prudent folkes takebe heed 

stonde an ymage in And remembrebe in youre lyves 

poete wyse seying Howe pis story / dobe proceed 

bees thre balades ©f be housbandes / and of peyre wyves 
Of pbeyre acorde / and of peyre stryves 5 
With lyf or deebe / which to derrain 
Is graunted / to bees beestis tweyn 


2 
Of Chichevache / and of Bycorne 
Tretebe hooly / bis matere 
Whos story habe taught us here toforne 10 
Howe bees beestis bope in feere 
Haue peyre pasture / as yee shal here 
Of men and wymmen / in se(n)tence 
Thorugh soufferaunce or thoroughe inpacience 
Shirley’s running titles are: pe fourome of desguv- 
singes contreved by Daun Johan Lidegate.——pbe 
me of Straunge Desgysinges.—pe gyse of a 
Gnwke MS see p. 79 note. 


Italicized words here represent underscorings by 
Shirley. 


116 


And pene shalle 
peer be portrayed 
twoo beestis oon 
fatte anoper leene 


panne shall per be 
pourtrayhed a fatte 
beest called By- 
corne of the Cuny 
trey of Bycornoys 
and seyne bees thre 
balades filowing 


panne shal be pour- 
trayed a companye 
of men comyng to- 
wardes pis beest 
Bicorne and sey 
pees foure balades 


JOHN LYDGATE 


3 
ffor pis Bicorne of his nature 
Wil noon oper maner foode 
But pacient men in his pasture 
And Chichevache . etebe wymmen goode 
And boobe beos beestes by the Roode 
Be fatte or leene / hit may not fayle 
Lyke lak or plente / of beyre vitayle 


4 
Of Bycornoys / I am Bycorne 
fful fatte and rounde / here as I stonde 
And in maryage bonde and sworne 
To Chichevage as hir husbande 
Whiche wil not ete on see nor lande 
But pacyent wyves debonayre 


Which to hir husbandes. beon (not) contrayre 


fful scarce god wot / is hir vitayle 
Humble wyves she fyndebe so fewe 

ffor alweys. at be countretayle 

Peyre tunge clappebe and dobe hewe 
Suche meke wyves / I beshrewe 

Pat neyber cane at bedde ne boord 

Peyre husbandes nought forbere on worde 


But my foode and my cherisshing 
To telle pleynly / and not tarye 

Ys of suche folk / whiche per living 
Dar to beyre wyves / be not contrarye 
Ne frome peyre lustis / dar not varye 
Nor with hem holde / no chaumpartye 
Alle suche my stomake . wol defye 


7 
ffelawes takebe heede and yee may see 
Howe Bicorne . castebe him to deuoure 
Alle humble men / bobe you and me 
Per is no gayne vs may socour 
Wo be ber fore in halle and bour 
To alle bees husbandes . which peyre lyves 
Maken maystresses of beyre wyves 


8 
Who bat so doobe pis is be lawe 
Pat bis Bycorne wol him oppresse 
And devowren in his mawe 
Pat of his wyff makebe his maystresse 
Pis wol vs bring in gret distresse 
ffor we for oure humylytee 
Of Bycorne shal devowred be 


9 
We stonden pleynly in suche cas 
Pat bey to vs maystresses be 
We may wel sing and seyne allas 


15 


20 


25 


30 


35 


40 


45 


50 


OD) 


BYCORNE AND CHICHEVACHE 


Pat we gaf hem be souereynte 60 
ffor we be thralle / and pey beo fre 

Wher fore Bycorne pis cruell beste 

Wol vs devowren at pe leest 


10 


But who bat cane be souereyne 

And his wyf teeche and chastyse 65 
Pat she dare nat a worde geyne seyne 

‘Nor disobeye no maner wyse 

Of suche a man I cane devyse 

He stant vnder proteccioun 

ffrome Bycornes . jurisdiccyoun 70 


11 


O noble wyves / beobe wel ware 

Takebe ensaumple nowe by me 

Or ellys afferme . weel I dare 

Yee shall beo ded yee shal not flee 

Beobe crabbed . voydebe humylitee 75 
Or Chychevache / ne wol not fayle 

You for to swolowe . in hir entrayle 


12 


Chychevache . pis is my name 

Hungry megre / sklendre and lene 

To shewe my body I haue gret shame 80 
ffor hunger / I feele so gret teene 

On me no fattnesse wol beo seene 

By cause bat pasture I fynde noon 

Per fore I am but skyn and boon 


13 


ffor my feding in existence 85 
Is of wymmen pat beon meeke 

And lyche Gresylde in pacyence 

Or more peyre bountee for to eeke 

But I ful longe may goon and seeke 

Or I cane fynde a gode repaaste 90 
A morowe to breke with my faaste 


14 
I trowe ber beo a dere yeere 
Of pacyent wymmen nowe beos dayes 
Who greuebe hem / with worde or chere 
Let him be ware of suche assayes 95 
ffor it is more pane thritty Mayes 
Pat I haue sought frome lande to londe 
But yit cane Gresylde neuer I fonde 


15 
I fonde but oone in al my lyve 
And she was deed . sith go ful yore I00 


ffor more pasture . I wil not stryve 


117 


panne shal ber be a 
womman deuowred 
yportrayhed in pe 
moupe of Chiche- 
vache cryen to alle 
wyves & sey pis 
balade 


panne shal be ber 
purtrayhed a longe 
horned beest sklen- 
dre and lene with 
sharpe teethe ana 
on his body no 
thinge saue skyn 
and boone 


118 


panne shal pere be 
pourtrayhed affter 
Chichevache an 
olde man with a 
bastoun on his 
bakke manassing pe 
beest for be res- 
cowing of his wyff 


The Siege, or Story, of Thebes, 4716 lines in five-beat couplets, was written 
In his prologue he represents 
himself as arriving at the Canterbury inn on the eve of the pilgrims’ return to 
London, as invited by the Host to join the party, and as beginning his tale at the 
Host’s command when the riders are outside town the next morning. The ma- 
terial of his narrative is part of that which Chaucer passed over as he opened 
his Knight’s Tale; Lydgate, however, did not use Chaucer’s source, Boccaccio’s 
Teseide, nor the Latin of Statius, but, according to Koeppel, drew on some one 
of the French prose romances connected with the rimed French Roman de 


by Lydgate as a 


Thebes. 


JOHN LYDGATE 


Nor seeche for my foode no more 
Ne for vitayle me to enstore 
Wymmen beon wexen so prudent 
Pey wol no more beo pacyent 


16 
My wyff allas devowred is 
Moost pacyente and mooste peysyble 
Sheo neuer sayde to me amysse 
Whome habe nowe slayne pis beest horryble 
And for it is an Impossyble 
To fynde euer suche a wyff 
I wil lyve sool during my lyff 


17 
ffor nowe of nuwe for beyre prowe 
De wyves of ful hyegh prudence 
Haue of assent made beyre avowe 
ffor to exyle pacience 
And cryed wolffes heed . obedyence 
To make Chichevache fayle 
Of hem to fynde more vitayle 


18 
Nowe Chichevache may fast longe 
And dye for al hire cruweltee 
Wymmen haue made hem self so stronge 
ffor to outraye humylyte 
O cely housbandes woo beon yee 
Suche as cane haue no pacyence 
Ageyns youre wyves vyolence 


19 
Yif pat yee suffre yee beo but deed 
Dis Bicorne awaytebe yowe so soore 
Eeke of youre wyves yee stonde in dreed 
Yif yee geyne seye hem any more 
And pus yee stonde / and haue doone yoore 
Of lyff and deeth bytwix tweyne 
Lynkeld in a double cheyne 


supplementary Canterbury Tale. 


105 


IIo 


115 


I20 


I25 


130 


PROLOGUE TO THE SIEGE OF THEBES 


PROLOGUE TO THE SIEGE OF THEBES 119 


There is no evidence that the monk worked on commission, nor any external 
evidence as to the date of his translation. It appears possible not only that the 
Thebes was written soon after the Troy Book, as has been suggested, but also 
that it was written between the conclusion of the Troy Book (1420) and the 
composition of the Epithalamium for Gloucester, of latter 1421 or earlier 1422. 
The fact that Tydeus is brought in so unexpectedly and unusually as one of 
the great heroes with whom Gloucester is compared, and the fact that Calydon 
and Argos are mentioned in the Epithalamium to illustrate the union of countries 
by marriage, make it supposable that the Thebes-source, containing these de- 
tails, had been already used by Lydgate. There are also stylistic points in 
which the Troy Book, the Thebes, and the Epithalamium show similarity. Aside 
from the romantic-epic tone of the two narratives, a tone faintly heard in the 
marriage-poem, note the management of the embassy-speech in Thebes 2016 ff. 
and compare Troy Book ii:1538; note the Shakespearean phrasing of Thebes 
2305-6 and of Troy Book i:4100-01, ii:8197; note the leaning towards nature- 
pictures in Thebes, though to much less extent than in the Troy Book; cf. the 
formulae of Oedipus’ wedding, Thebes 826 ff., with phrasings in the Epithala- 
mium; cf. the detail of Thebes 1669 with Troy Book 11:3547, 4181. Other posi- 
tive points might be adduced; and we may note the negative fact emphasized 
by Koeppel, that the death of Henry V (August 1422) is not mentioned in the 
Siege of Thebes,—also that Henry is still living when the Epithalamium is 
composed. 

Failing any evidence of this poem’s execution to order, it may be treated 
as a labor of love, an attempt on Lydgate’s part to link his name with that of 
Chaucer and his effort with the Canterbury Tales. Yet it is not appended to 
many MSS of the Tales,—to but four so far as I have noted—Adds. 5140 and 
Egerton 2864 of the British Museum, the privately owned Cardigan MS, and 
Christ Church College Oxford 152. Other copies of the poem are:—Brit. Mus. 
Arundel 119 (whence my text), Adds. 18632 (formerly the Denbigh MS), Adds. 
29729, Cotton App. xxvii, and Royal 18 D ii; in the Bodleian Library are Bodley 
776, Digby 230, Laud 416 and 557, and Rawlinson C 48; in the University Li- 
brary Cambridge is Adds. 3137; in Trinity College Cambridge are O 5, 2 and 
R 4, 20; in the archiepiscopal library is Lambeth 742; in Durham Cathedral Li- 
brary is Durham V ii, 14; in the library of Magdalen College Cambridge is 
Pepys 2011. Privately owned are a Gurney MS, Lord Bath’s Longleat 257, 
Prince Frederick Dhuleep Singh’s copy, formerly of the Tixall Library, and Lord 
Mostyn’s MS containing the poem, bought in 1920 by Mr. Abbot. 

To these twenty-four texts ‘actually in existence we may add the copy in 
the lost Coventry School MS, for which see my Chaucer Manual, p. 354; and 
the copy bequeathed by John Baret of Bury in 1463 to his priestly cousin John 
Cleye. MacCracken’s list erroneously includes Harley 262, which is a Turkish MS. 

The poem was printed by de Worde ca.1500. In 1561 John Stow included 
it in his edition of Chaucer’s Works, stating that it was by Lydgate; his own 
MS-copy exists in Brit. Mus. Adds. 29729. Subsequently collected eds. of Chaucer 
reprinted the poem, down to 1721, and it appears in Chalmers’ English Poets, 
vol.i. It was edited for the EETS by Erdmann in 1911, vol. i, the text. Wilker, 
in his Altengl. Lesebuch, ii:105 (1879), reprinted the 1561 text of the Prologue, 


120 JOHN LYDGATE 


and was led by that into a few erroneous notes. The Arundel 119 text of the 
Prologue was printed by Miss Spurgeon in her EETS Chaucer Allusions i:26, 
and by me in Anglia 36 :360, with notes. 

The poem was modernized by Darton, London, 1904. Notes may be found 
in Gosse’s ed. of Gray, i:387 ff., in Warton-Hazlitt’s English Poetry, 1ii:74, 
and in ten Brink’s English Literature, i1:225. See E. Koeppel, Lydgate’s Story 
of Thebes, eine Quellenuntersuchung, Munich, 1884. 

A work executed as appendage to Chaucer would naturally show the elder 
poet’s influence. Ten Brink remarked that in this prologue Lydgate appeared 
almost as Chaucer’s ape, a dictum warmly disputed by Churton Collins in his 
Ephemera Critica, p. 199. It is recommended to the student to trace these hun- 
dred and seventy-six lines, idea by idea and phrase by phrase, to their sources 
in the Canterbury Tales; to note the attempt at swinging sentence-management, 
at description of character, and at humor, and to establish thus an independent 
opinion of Lydgate’s effort. There should also be read the prologue to Beryn, 
and perhaps Percy Mackaye’s Canterbury Pilgrims. 

Brit. Mus. Arundel 119, the manuscript here used, is dated by Ward, Cata- 
logue of Romances, i:87, about 1430. The volume, which contains only this 
work, bears the arms of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, husband of Thomas 
Chaucer’s daughter Alice; he died in 1450. As Lydgate’s Virtues of the Mass 
was compiled for one of Suffolk’s three wives, and as the monk’s application, 
1441, for renewed pension was supported by Suffolk, we recognize an associa- 
tional value to this codex. 

A few differences between the text of the prologue here printed and its 
EETS print have been verified by repeated collation. The Arundel MS has in 
the prologue one or two scribal slips; in 63 take is written for tale, in 110 fo is 
omitted, and in 131 the n of Canterbury was not indicated by the customary 
horizontal line over the vowel. 


[MS Brit. Mus. Arundel 119] 


Phebus in Ariete Whan bri3t Phebus / passed was be ram 
_ Myd of Aprille / & in to bole cam 
Saturnus in Vir- And Satourn old / wt his frosty face 
gine In virgyne / taken had his place 

Malencolik / & slowgh of mocioun 5 
And was also / in thoposicioun 
Of lucina / the mone moyst and pale 
That many Shour / fro heuene made avale 
Whan Aurora / was in be morowe red 

Jubiter in capito And Iubiter / in the Crabbes Hed 10 

cancri Hath take his paleys / and his mansioun 

The lusty tyme / and Ioly fressh Sesoun 
Whan that flora / the noble myghty quene 
The soyl hath clad / in newe tendre grene 
With her floures / craftyly ymeynt 15 
Braunch & bough / wib red & white dopeynt 
ffletinge be bawme / on hillis & on valys 
The tyme in soth / whan Canterbury talys 
Complet and told / at many sondry stage 
Of estatis // in the pilgrimage 20 
Euerich man / lik to his degre 


PROLOGUE TO THE SIEGE OF THEBES 121 


Some of desport / somme of moralite 
Some of knyghthode / loue and gentillesse 
And some also of parfit holynesse 

And sommie also in soth / of ribaudye 

To make laughter / in be companye 

Ech admitted / for non wold other greve 
Lich as the Cook / be millere and the Reve 
Aquytte hem silf / shortly to conclude 
Boystously in her teermes Rude 

Whan pei hadde / wel dronken of the bolle 
And ek also / with his pylled nolle 

The pardowner beerdless al his Chyn 
Glasy Eyed / and face of Cherubyn 
Tellyng a tale / to angre with the frere 
As opynly // the storie kan 30w lere 
Word for word / with euery circumstaunce 
Echon ywrite / and put in remembraunce 
By hym pat was / 3if I shal not feyne 
ffoure of Poetes / thorghout al breteyne 
Which sothly hadde / most of excellence 
In rethorike / and in eloquence 

Rede his making / who list the trouth fynde 
Which neuer shal / appallen in my mynde 
But alwey fressh / ben in my memoyre 
To who be 3oue / pris honure & gloyre 
Of wel seyinge / first in oure language 
Chief Registrer / of pis pilgrimage 

Al pat was tolde / for3eting noght at al 
ffeyned talis / nor ping Historial 

With many prouerbe / diuers & vnkouth 
Be rehersaile / of his Sugrid mouth 

Of eche thyng / keping in substaunce 

The sentence hool / with oute variance 
Voyding the Chaf / sothly for to seyn 
Enlumynyng / be trewe piked greyn 

Be crafty writinge / of his sawes swete 
ffro the tyme / that thei ded mete 

first the pylgrimes / sothly euerichon 

At the Tabbard / assembled on be on 

And fro Suthwerk / shortly forto seye 

To Canterbury / ridyng on her weie 
Tellyng a ta(1)e / as I reherce can 

Lich as the hoste / assigned euery man 
None so hardy / his biddying disobeye 
And this whil / that the pilgrimes leye 

At Canterbury / wel lo(g)ged on and all 
I not in soth / what I may it call 

Hap / or fortune / in Conclusioun 

That me byfil / to entren into toun 

The holy seynt / pleynly to visite 

Aftere siknesse / my vowes to aquyte 

In a Cope of blak / & not of grene 

On a palfrey / slender / long / & lene 
Wipb rusty brydel / mad nat for pe sale 
My man to forn / with a voide male 


25 


30 


35 


40 


45 


50 


55 


60 


65 


70 


75 


The cook the Mil- 
lere and the reve 


Pardoner 


Chaucer 


At pe tabard in 
Suthwerk 


The hoste 


Discryving of the 
Monk 


122 


The wordes of be 
host to the Monk 


Lydgate 
Monk of Bery 


The wordes of pe 
host 


JOHN LYDGATE 


Which of ffortune / took myn Inne anon 

Wher be pylgrymes / were logged euerichon 
The same tyme / Her gouernour the host 
Stonding in hall . ful of wynde & bost 80 
Lich to a man / wonder sterne & fers 

Which spak to me / and seide anon daun pers 
Daun Domynyk / Dan Godfrey / or Clement 

3e be welcom / newly into Kent 

Thogh 3oure bridel / haue neiper boos ne belle 85 
Besechinge 30u / pat 3e wil me telle 

first 3oure name / and of what contre 

With oute mor . shortely that 3e be 

That loke so pale / al deuoyde of blood 

Vpon 3oure hede / a wonder thred bar hood 90 
Wel araied / forto ride late 

I answerde / my name was Lydgate 

Monk of Bery / ny3 fyfty 3ere of age 

Come to this toune / to do my pilgrimage 

As I haue hight / I ha ther of no shame 95 
Dan Iohn quod he / wel broke 3e 3o0ure name 
Thogh 3e be soul / beth right glad & light 
Preiyng 30u / soupe with vs to nyght 

And 3e shal han / mad at 3o0ure devis 

A gret puddyng / or a rounde hagys 100 
A ffranchmole / a tansey / or a froyse 

To ben a Monk / Sclender is 30ure koyse 

Se han be seke / I dar myn hede assure 

Or late fed/ in a feynt pasture 

Lift vp 3oure hed / be glad take no sorowe —105 
And 3e shal hom ride with vs to morowe 

I seye whan 3e rested han 3our fille 

Aftere soper / Slepe wol do non ille 

Wrappe wel 3oure hede / clothes rounde aboute 
Strong notty ale / wol mak 30u (to) route IIo 
Tak a pylow / bat 3e lye not lowe 

Sif nede be / Spar not to blowe 

To holde wynde / be myn opynyoun 

Wil engendre / collis passioun 

And make men to greuen / on her roppys II5 
Whan pei han filled / her mawes & her croppys 
But toward nyght / ete some fenel Rede 

Annys / Comyn / or coriandre sede 

And lik as I / pouer haue & myght 

I Charge 30w / rise not at Mydnyght 120 
Thogh it so be / the moone shyne cler 

I wol my silf / be 30ure Orloger 

To morow erly / whan I se my tyme 

ffor we wol forp / parcel afore Pryme 

A company / parde / Shal do 30u good 125 
What look vp Monk / for by kokkis blood 
Thow shalt be mery / who so pat sey nay 

ffor to morowe anoon / as it is day 

And that it gynne / in be Est to dawe 

Thow shalt be bound / to a newe lawe 130 
Att goyng oute of Ca(n)terbury toune 


PROLOGUE TO THE SIEGE OF THEBES 123 


And leyn aside / thy professioun 

Thow shalt not chese / nor pi silf withdrawe 

3if eny myrth / be founden in thy mawe 

Lyk the custom / of this Compenye 135 
ffor non so proude / that dar me denye 

Knyght nor knaue / Chanon / prest / ne nonne 
To telle a tale / pleynly as thei konne 

Whan I assigne / and se tyme opportune 

And for that we / our purpoos will contune 140 
We wil homward / the same custome vse 

And thow shalt not / platly the excuse 

Be now wel war / Stody wel to nyght 

But for al this / be of herte 1i3t 

Thy wit shall be / be Sharper & the bet 145 
And we anon / were to Soper set 

And serued wel / vnto oure plesaunce 

And sone after / be good gouernaunce 

Vnto bed goth euery maner wight 

And touarde morowe / anon as it was light 150 
Euery Pilgryme / both bet & wors 

As bad oure hoste / toke anon his hors 

Whan the sonne / roos in the est ful clyere 

ffully in purpoos / to come to dynere 

Vnto Osspryng / and breke per oure faste 155 
And whan we weren / from Canterbury paste 
Noght the space / of a bowe draught 

Our hoost in hast / hab my bridel raught 

And to me seide / as it were in game 

Come forth dan Iohn / be 30ur Cristene name 160 
And lat vs make / some manere myrth or play 
Shet 3oure portoos / a twenty deuelway 

Is no disport / so to patere & seie 

It wol make 3oure lippes / wonder dreye 

Tel some tale / and make ther of (a) Iape 165 
ffor be my Rouncy / thow shalt not eskape 

But prech not / of non holynesse 

Gynne some tale / of myrth or of gladnesse 

And nodde not / with thyn heuy bekke 

Tell vs somme thyng / that draweb to effekke 170 
Only of Ioye / make no lenger lette 

And whan I saugh / it wolde be no bette 

I obeyde / vnto his biddynge 

So as the lawe / me bonde in al thinge 

And as I coude / with a pale cheere 175 
My tale I gan / anon / as 3e shal here 


Explicit prologus 


124 JOHN LYDGATE 


THE DANCE MACABRE 


There exist in English two somewhat different recensions of a poem known 
as the Dance Macabre,! Dance of Death, or Dance of Paul’s, a poem translated 
by John Lydgate from the French at the end of the first quarter of the fifteenth 
century. In this “dance” or procession, Death addresses in turn all classes of 
men, from Pope and Emperor to Laborer and Hermit, bidding them follow him; 
for each character who appears there is a stanza of summons by Death and a 
stanza of lamenting reply by the personage called. One of these two recensions, 
here termed A, is distinguished by five introductory stanzas in which Lydgate 
tells us that he had seen the French verses ‘‘depict upon a wall” at SS. Inno- 
cents’ church in Paris, by an envoy of two stanzas in which he makes the con- 
ventional apology for his “rude language’’ and gives his name, and by several 
characters added to the French, notably the “tregetour” or juggler of Henry 
the Fifth. There are 36 personages in this version; it runs quite close to a French 
text (here printed), of which it frequently retains the rime-words. 

The other recension (B), is without the introduction and envoy; it omits 
a half-score of characters present in A, notably the Usurer, Tregetour, and Par- 
son; and it adds a half-dozen to the earlier version. As it often gives its per- 
sonages? a name not coincident with that given in A, and as it several times 
rewrites the stanzas, we cannot always determine whether B is rewriting A or 
substituting a different character. But that B is based upon A rather than upon 
the French is evident, e.g., from its retaining three of the five characters added 
by Lydgate to the French; see also the notes on lines 64, 137, 297. Only a com- 
plete parallel-text edition can show the many differences and resemblances of 
the two recensions, and the divergences of B-MSS from each other as compared 
to the general agreement of A-texts. The texts of B however resemble one an- 
other in a colorlessness, a tendency to empty generalities, wherever the A-type is 
abandoned. 

A text of the earlier recension, that bearing Lydgate’s name, is here printed, 
from the manuscript Selden supra 53 of the Bodleian Library at Oxford.2 So 


*The word Macabre should be pronounced trisyllabic and with last syllable stressed,— 
Mac-a-bray. For its meaning see note on line 24. 

* Of the characters which the two recensions have in common, the arrangement is a little 
different. The order Pope-Emperor-Cardinal is the same in both, but in the sequence of the 
next nine characters B makes an interesting alteration. Lydgate had followed the French 
in putting King next to Cardinal, with Patriarch, Duke, Archbishop, Baron, Bishop, Squire, 
Abbot, in the order named. The B-reviser transposed the pairs King-Patriarch, Duke-Arch- 
bishop, etc., so as to give precedence to the spiritual dignitary in each case. The juxtaposition 
of two ecclesiastical lords, Cardinal and Patriarch, was avoided in B by the insertion of the 
Empress after the Cardinal. Similarly, the Emperor is not in B termed “hiest of noblesse”’, 
but is “surmountyng of noblesse”; and yet while A, in line 60, gives the Pope sovereignty over 
“the chirche and states temporal”, the B-version alters to “the chirche most in especial”. 

*Bodl. Selden supra 53 is on vellum, in eights, of 159 leaves 1014 by 714 inches, and is 
impf. at beginning. It is well written in one strong square neat professional hand, with 
numerous marginal rubrics and small red and blue capitals to stanzas. It contains :—Hoccleve’s 
Regement of Princes, impf. at beginning, ending 76 a.—Hoccleve’s Complaint, Dialogue, etc., 
ie. the group of his poems termed “the Series” p, 57 here-—The Dance Macabre, foll. 148 a— 
158 b. No heading; in the margin, red, “Verba translatoris”. Colophon in red, leaf rubbed, 
—“Here e............ the Daunce of De........ ” Below, on 158 b, a different hand has written the two 
Empress-stanzas; cf. the B-recension. Leaf 159, a guard-leaf, darkened, carries a copy of 
“Earth upon earth”. 


THE DANCE MACABRE 125 


far as I know, five other texts of that type exist, in Brit. Mus. Harley 116, in 
Bodley 221 and Laud 735 of the Bodleian, in Trinity College Cambridge R 3,21, 
and in a codex formerly belonging to the Earl of Ellesmere, now in the Hunt- 
ington Library, California.1 The lost manuscript of Coventry School, described 
by Bernard in his 1697 Catalogus as containing this poem, agreed in contents 
with Laud and Bodley. 

The B-recension appears in five manuscripts:—Bodley 686 of the Bodleian 
Library, Corpus Christi College Oxford 237, Lansdowne 699 of the Brit. Mus., 
and its partial sister Leyden Vossianus 9 of Leyden, Holland; this last I have 
not seen. It is also in the MS Lincoln Cathedral C 5,4; and a fragment exists 
in Brit. Mus. Cotton Vespasian A xxv. The miscellaneous Lydgate-codices 
Lansdowne (and Leyden?) show very free handling in all their texts, so free 
that in this poem they do not fairly represent the B-type. 

The A-version of the Dance Macabre was printed by Tottel with the 1554 
Fall of Princes; this was reprinted by Dugdale in his History of St. Paul’s 
Cathedral, 1658, and in his Monasticon Anglicanum, 1673, vol. iii; the text may 
also be found in Francis Douce’s monograph on Holbein’s Dance of Death, 
London, 1790, and in Montaiglon’s edition of Holbein’s Alphabet of Death, 
Paris, 1846. With his edition of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, 1923, vol. iii, Dr. 
Henry Bergen printed the Tottel text of the Dance, collated with Harley 116 and 
“in part with Lansdowne 699”. 

As Lydgate says in his stanzas of introduction and envoy, he found the 
original of his poem at Paris, “depict vppon a walle” at the Church of the Inno- 
cents; and being urged by French clerks, he undertook a translation and sent it 
home to England. That the monk was in Paris about 1426 is probable from his 
Pedigree of Henry VI, done in that year from the French at the request of the 
Earl of Warwick, who was then in France; it is further probable from the fact 
that the Dance-fresco had since 1424 been upon the walls of SS. Innocents, and 
had made a strong impression upon beholders. 

A similar use was made of Lydgate’s translation, or some modified form of 
it, in London. Stow in his Survey of London (ed. Kingsford, i: 327) says that 
about the cloister of St. Paul’s was “artificially and richly painted the dance of 
Machabray, or dance of death, commonly called the dance of Pauls: the like 
whereof was painted about S. Innocents cloyster at Paris in France: the meters 
or poesie of this dance were translated out of French into English by Iohn 
Lidgate Monke of Bury, the picture of death leading all estates, at the dispense 
of Ienken Carpenter, in the raigne of Henry the sixt.” As Kingsford points out, 
this painting was known to Sir Thomas More, who alludes to it as the Daunce of 
Death. The cloister was pulled down in 1549. 

No trace now remains of the few fifteenth or sixteenth-century English 
representations of the Dance Macabre. There was a tapestry of “Makaborne” 
in the collection of Henry VIII; there was a fresco in the archiepiscopal palace 
at Croydon, one in Salisbury Cathedral, and one in Wortley Hall, Gloucester- 
shire. Whether these, or any of these, were of the same processional character 
as the pictures of St. Paul’s, we do not know; nor do we know whether or not 
they had accompanying texts, except that the late and poor Cotton MS text of 
our Dance is said to be that of Wortley Hall. The verses of Lydgate were 


*Collations of the MS El 26 A 13 I owe to the kindness of Capt. R. B. Haselden, Keeper 
of MSS in the Huntington Library. 


126 JOHN LYDGATE 


separately preserved, and there are a number of English poems on death which 
allude to the Dance of Paul’s or to some similar picture; for example, a clumsy 
poem transcribed in MS Brit. Mus. Adds. 37049, in which the tenth stanza be- 
gins,—‘‘Man remembyr of be dawnce of makabre”’; or in two poems printed 
with Lydgate’s by Halliwell, pp. 34, 77. 

Both as picture and as text, the Dance of Death, or Triumph of Death, 
is a West-European phenomenon. Sometimes restricted to the limits of an 
illumination in a missal, sometimes extended all along the arcades of a cloister 
or a bridge, or carved in the tympanum of a cathedral porch, the idea was wide- 
spread and powerfully effective. In Italy we have such graveyard monuments 
as the great fresco of the Campo Santo at Pisa, with a row of corpses stretched 
before the feet of an unwary party of gay riders; or the picture in the Church 
of the Disciplini at Clusone, depicting three huge skeletons standing upon an 
open tomb surrounded by imploring popes, kings, and ecclesiastics, while below 
passes the procession of humanity, each figure escorted by a skeleton. In France 
there were the pictures and texts of Paris and of Kermaria in Britanny, the pic- 
tures of La Chaise-Dieu in Auvergne, and the tapestries of Amiens Cathedral. 
In Germany and in Switzerland traces are numerous, although the texts once in 
Basel, Berlin, and Libeck are now largely illegible, and the later work of Holbein 
and the well-known pictures of the Muhlenbriicke at Lucerne are more famous 
than their prototypes. The ‘“Death-motif” which inspires the Dance also in- 
spired the representations of the Three Living and Three Dead (another branch 
of this subject) and inspired the many Triumphs of Death, of which latter 
Petrarch’s poem and its woodcut-illustrations are the most striking examples. 

In the pictures and texts of Northern Europe there is a tone quite different 
from the more formal Triumph as seen in Italy, a tone belonging to the later 
medieval, bourgeois society out of which these Northern dances grew. The Dance 
of Death has a number of elements. There is the figure of a guide or leader to 
the after-life, a motive of great antiquity; there is the processional motive, also 
very old; there is the dialogue-form; and there are two ideas of quite different 
date,—the feeling of Death’s malignant satisfaction in his work, and the in- 
sistence on a social classification of his victims. While the former of these 
ideas is by no means foreign to the Etruscan grave-frescoes, executed before the 
Christian era, the emphatic combination of the two, as in the Dance here dis- 
cussed, may indicate the condition of a society in which the Black Death was 
rampant and in which the feudal system was breaking up. 

The appearance of those summoned by Death in an ordered class-list is not 
so very late in the medieval period. A Latin poem of perhaps the twelfth cen- 
tury, the “Vado Mori”, introduces twelve figures, from Pope to pauper, each 
speaking two lines of farewell to life; and in a probably later development of 
this theme, the dialogue-structure appears, some interlocutor (not Death) speak- 
ing a companion couplet beginning “Vive Deo” each time. So far as I know, 
these are the earliest texts to make the classed arrangement; for although the 
Etruscan frescoes were so interpreted at first, recent investigation has rejected 
the possibility of any “class-idea” in the procession depicted, for instance, in the 
Grotto del Cardinale at Corneto. 

I subjoin a text of the Vado Mori, from MS Brit.Mus.Lansdowne 397. 


THE DANCE MACABRE 127 


Dum mortem meditor crescit michi causa 
doloris 

Nam cuntis horis mors venit ecce citor 

Pauperis et regis communis lex moriendi 

Dat causam flendi si bene scripta legis 

Gustato pomo nullus transit sine morte 

Heu (misera) sorte labitur omnis homo 


Vado mori papa qui iussu regna subegi 
Mors michi régna tulit eccine vado mori 


Vado mori rex sum quid honor quid 
gloria regum 
Est via mors hominis regia vado mori 


Vado mori presul cleri popwlique lucerna 
Qui fueram validus langueo vado mori 


Vado mori miles victor certamine belli 
Mortem non didici vincere vado mori 


Vado mori monachus mundi moriturus 
amori 
Vt moriatur amor hic michi vado mori 


Vado mori legista fui defensor egenis 
Causidicus causas (desero) vado mori 


Vado mori logicus aliis concludere noui 
Conclusit breuiter mors michi vado mori 


Vado mori medicus medicamine non 
redimendus 
Quicquid agat medici pocio vado mori 


Vado mori sapiens michi nil sapiencia 
prodest 
Me reddit fatuum / mors fera vado mori 


Vado mori diues (ad) quid michi copia 
rerum i 
Dum mortem nequeat pellere vado mori 


Vado mori cultor collegi farris aceruos 
Quos ego pro vili computo vado mori 


Vado mori pauper quem (semper) Chris- 
tus amauit 
Hune sequar euitans ommia vado mori 


Bracketed words above are from the MS Brit. Mus. Adds. 38131. Similar 
texts are found in Brit. Mus. Adds. 24660 and Royal 5 E xxi, in a MS at Erfurt 
printed by Fehse in Zeitschr. f. deut. Philol. 42:277, and in two MSS mentioned 
by Storck ibid. 42:422. Versions expanded by additional characters are men- 
tioned by Storck, and are in Brit. Mus. Adds. 18347 and Royal 7 E vii. For the 
expanded or dialogue-version, see my article in Modern Philology, vol. 8. 

This “Vado Mori” idea and phrasing were popular as all Death-poetry was 
and is popular. Citations, or English versions of bits, appear in many MSS; 
thus, in Brit. Mus. Cotton Faustina B vi, and in Stowe 39, are rimed alliterative 
versions of a few stanzas, introducing the king, the knight, and a cleric,—e.g., 
“T wende to dede knight stithe in stoure Thurghe fyght in felde I wane be flour 
Na fightes me taght be dede to quell I weend to dede soth I yow tell.” And de- 
tached stanzas of the Latin are at the top of some pages of the 1490 French 
Danse des Hommes in Guyot Marchand’s edition. 

It seems obvious that these stanzas were intended to accompany either paint- 
ings or a mimetic presentation. Whether the repetition of Vado Mori at the 
end of each distich were an exit-phrase for the moving figure, or merely a rhetori- 
cal device, is uncertain; and in the expanded form of the text it is also uncer- 
tain who is the speaker of the “Vive Deo” distich. It may well have been not 
Death, but a homilist into whose sermon this pageant was inserted, and who 
from his pulpit commented on each passing figure. Such indeed is the view of 
Male, in his admirable work on late medieval religious art, p. 392, who suggests 
that the origin of the Death-dances is to be sought in the “illustrated’’ medieval 
sermon. While the preacher warned and exhorted, the costumed figures of 
king, soldier, laborer, etc., passed below his pulpit; and impressive as might be 
the oratorical warning each time repeated, the effect of the shrouded seizing 
Death-figure, later perhaps of the speaking Death-figure, must have been power- 


128 JOHN LYDGATE 


ful indeed. On such a theory, the Dance Macabre, in its rudimentary or its de- 
veloped form, would have its fountain-head even where the medieval drama rose. 
Such a presentation, after it began to use the visible figure of Death which at 
first did not appear, could manage with one Death, who met and seized each 
personage as he entered from the “wings” and convoyed him across in front of 
the congregation. * But the treatment of the theme in a series of wall-paintings, 
broken into arcades as were the cloisters of SS. Innocents at Paris, compelled the 
painter to repeat each time the figure of Death, a device accepted by the onlookers 
with no more imaginative difficulty than Romans felt in viewing the column 
of Trajan with its ninety-times-repeated figure of the Emperor. The endeavor 
of some scholars to explain the numerous skeletons of the Dance Macabre paint- 
ings as the Dead escorting their living brethren, rather than as Death, is based 
upon a reading of modern ideas into medieval artistic conditions. The repetition 
of the skeleton puzzled no medieval understanding. 

The immense attraction of the theme for all humanity needs no comment. 
But the many visitations of the plague to West Europe between 1348 and 1450 
must have especially affected the imagination and the art-expression of those 
years. When we consider that in the first month alone of the World War there 
were some 1500 cartoons of Death on the battle-field, it is easy to believe that 
the swiftness, the deadliness, and the impartiality of the Black Death assisted 
in raising the tide of Death-literature and Death-painting that flowed over 
Europe in the fifteenth century. Every third spade-thrust into manuscript- 
mould of that period brings up a farewell or an epitaph or a dialogue of Soul 
and Body or a lyric on this haunting theme, with occasionally a direct allusion 
to “stroke of pestilence”, such as Lydgate here makes. Some share the Black 
Death must have, had in giving this mass of grave-literature its frequent hard 
fierceness of tone. 

But not all the popularity of the motive in the fifteenth century is due to 
the especial sense then prevalent of the uncertain tenure of life. Elsewhere in 
this volume are pointed out similarities between the fifteenth and the eighteenth 
century; and this is another. An age lacking in enthusiasms and convictions, 
an age of dull sense-perceptions and low creative power, that is, an age of 
strong inhibitions, tends to the acceptance of authority, to formulae, and to the 
expression of those didactic and melancholic feelings which the torpid or the 
conventionalized mind considers “decorous”. The wide popularity of the “grave- 
yard school” of the eighteenth century, the mass of imitations of Gray’s Elegy, 
the welcome extended by Germany and by France to Young’s Night Thoughts 
(1742-44) and to Blair’s Grave (1743), the tomb-sculptures and the engravings 
of the period, all indicate, not the insecurity and terror of plague or war, but the 
reduction of creative power. The eighteenth-century pre-occupation with death 
is less harshly conspicuous than that of the fifteenth century because, in the 
three hundred and fifty years which had elapsed since Chaucer, England had laid 
down what we may call, in the combined phrase of Carlyle. Sainte-Beuve, and 
Fitzgerald, a “substratum of intellectual peat”, a soil which by 1750 had become 
so deep that no temporary drought could deprive it of its living forests. No 
poetic luxuriance obliterates the tendency to the didactic and the melancholic, 
which is especially marked in the Northern races; even in the greatest there is 
the horrified cry of Claudio, the musing of Jaques and the gloom of Hamlet, the 
farewell of Prospero. But with Shakespeare the figure of Death remains well 


THE DANCE MACABRE 129 


beyond the crowded doorway of life. Not only the imminence of terror, but the 
absence of vigor, the dulling of perception, can make his figure assume dispro- 
portionate magnitude. And in the fifteenth century both elements, the physical 
fear and the lowered intellectual vitality, combined to spread the Death-fascina- 
tion. 

So far as the Dance Macabre is concerned, England took her text from 
France, through Lydgate. The French text is definitely literary as compared 
with the single existing Spanish Dance of Death and with a German text 
(Liibeck) which resembles the Spanish in addressing the eighth and last line 
of each Death-speech to the next victim. Such a peculiarity is neither pictorial 
nor literary; it implies representation by living beings. And however the pa- 
triotic dispute as to priority of Dance-text may be waged, the student perceives 
that one class of texts is of the dramatic-sermon type and another of the wall- 
fresco type. To the latter category belonged the poem translated by Lydgate. 
The pictures which accompanied his text, and its original, both perished in the 
sixteenth century by the destruction of St. Paul’s cloisters and of the Church 
of SS. Innocents in Paris; but both the French and English poems survive in 
transcripts,! and a French wall-picture at Kermaria, Brittany, is copied, in figures 
and in text, from the Paris Dance. (See Soleil as below.) 

The length of stanza in French and in English was no obstacle to the use 
of these poems in fresco or in tapestry. Stained-glass windows no larger than 
those of the little church of Our Lady at Grand Andelys, Normandy, carry four- 
line stanzas descriptive of the Clovis and Clotilde pictures they present ; Lydgate 
in his Bycorne and Chichevache, or Sir Thomas More in his poems written for 
tapestries in his father’s house,? used the seven-line stanza; the tapestry-verses 
written in French for Catherine de Médicis* ran in some cases to twenty lines 
for the “Dames illustres’” there represented; and much earlier, in the third cen- 
tury, Prudentius drew up a Diptychon or Dittochaeon of 49 hexametric four-line 
stanzas to serve as legends for sacred pictures. 

Lydgate’s translation of the French is, he says, “not word by word but 
following the substance”; it adheres much more closely to its original, how- 
ever, than is usual with him. The structure of the poem compelled him to fidel- 
ity and restrained his verbosity. The desire to retain the proverbial line with 
which each stanza of the French closes,—a literary device which appealed strongly 
to his taste,—also led him to take over much of the French rime-scheme. The 
proverbial line and its mate gave him but two of his eight lines and one of his 
three rimes; two more rime-sounds had to be found, one of which must serve 
for four lines; and his resort for this latter to words of Romance endings should 
be compared with the French. Occasionally, as in stanzas 21 and 48, none of 
the French rime-sounds is preserved; and in the stanzas added by Lydgate to 
the French he has a closing proverb only in the case of the Abbess. As the 
French line is of four beats and the Lydgatian of five, there is a small amount 


*The French text preserved in a MS of the Bibliothéque Communale at Lille, which is 
very close to Lydgate’s version, is printed in the Notes below. Whether this MS still exists 
or not, after the fire during the German occupation of Lille, I cannot say; I have no reply 
to inquiries. 

* These stanzas are reprinted by Fliigel, Neuengl. Lesebuch, pp. 40-42. 

_ *See the British Museum Catal. of Western MSS in the Old Royal and Kings’ Collec- 
tions, 1921, under Royal 20 A xx. 


130 JOHN LYDGATE 


of padding in the English, increased somewhat by the exigencies of rime and by 
Lydgate’s natural tendency to set phrases such as:—as I reherce can, whoso 
takith hede, who prudently can se, if I shall nat tarie; etc. 

Such merit as the poem possesses is, of course, due to its French original; 
but even in the somewhat wooden translation of Lydgate the subject arouses 
interest. A study of Death, be it a wall-fresco of the fifteenth century or a 
sculpture such as the Paris Aux Morts of the twentieth, reaches the imagination 
of the man in the street. And the fifteenth-century Dance derived additional 
power from its satiric character. In it the rich, the mighty, the gifted, are as 
helpless as the laborer; all the artificial and ephemeral distinctions of life dis- 
appear. The bourgeois spectator of the Dance shared the harsh satisfaction of 
Death himself in levelling social differences. In such and similar insistences on 
the fragility of human prosperity the spirit of the time revelled; as Gaston Paris 
has said :—‘‘Deux themes revenaient sans cesse dans cette littérature; des con- 
sidérations sur la puissance et les vicissitudes de la fortune et des réflexions sur 
V'inéluctabilité de la mort.” 

SELECT REFERENCE LIST V 

Douce, The Dance of Death..... ascribed to Macaber and Hans Holbein, London, 
1794?, 1833, etc. 

Langlois, Pottier, Baudry, Essai historique, philosophique, et pittoresque sur les dances 
des morts, 2 vols., Rouen, 1852. 

Soleil, Les heures gothiques et la littérature pieuse au xv¢ et xvif siécles, Paris, 1882 

Seelmann, Die Totentanze des Mittelalters, Leipzig, 1893. 

Vigo, Le danze macabre in Italia, Bergamo, 2d ed., 1901. 

Fehse, Der Ursprung der Totentanze, Halle, 1907. 

Dimier, Les dances macabres et l’idée de la Mort dans 1’art chrétien, Paris, 1908. 

Male, L’art religieux de la fin du moyen-age en France, Paris, 1908. 
See also his art. in Revue de deux mondes 32:647-679 (1906). 

Kinstle, Die Legende der drei Lebenden und der drei Toten und der Totentanz, Frei- 
burg, 1908. See chap. v for survey and criticism of previous work. 

Fehse, Das Totentanzproblem, in Ztschr. f. deut. Philol. 42:261-286 (1910). Com- 
bating Kiinstle’s theory of the derivation of the Dance from the Legend. 
Storck, Die Legende von den drei Lebenden u. von den drei Toten, Tiibingen diss., 1910. 

Storck, Das “Vado Mori”, in Ztschr. f. deut. Philol. 42:422-28 (1910). 

Hammond, Latin Texts of the Dance of Death, in ModPhil 8 :399-410 (Jan. 1911). 

Durwachter, Die Totentanzforschung, in Festschrift f. G. von Hertling, i:390 ff., 1913. 

Glixelli, Les cinq poémes des Trois Morts et des Trois Vifs, Paris, 1914. 

Huet, Notes d’histoire littéraire: iii, La Danse Macabre, Paris, 1918. (On the word 
macabre.) 


Martha, J., L’art étrusque, Paris, 1889. See p. 393. 

Weege, F., Etruskische Malerei, Halle, 1921. See p. 77 for the Tomba del Cardinale. 

Poulsen, F., trans]. Andersen, Etruscan Tomb Painting, Oxford, 1922. See p. 58, and 
plate to face, for the Tomba del Cardinale. 


THE DANCE MACABRE 131 


[MS Bodleian Selden supra 53, fol. 148a] 


Verba translatoris 
O 3ee folkes / harde hertid as a stone - 
Wich to pe worlde / haue al 3our aduer- 
tence 
Liche as it shulde / laste euere in oone- 
Where is 30ur witt / wher is 30ur pru- 
dence 
To se aforn / the sodeine violence: 5 
Of cruel dethe / bat be so wis and sage - 
Wiche sleeth allas / by stroke of pesti- 
lence - 
Bobe 30ng and olde / of lowe & hy 
parage - 
2 
Deeth sparith not / lowe ne hy degre - 
Popes kynges ne worthy Emperours- 10 
Whan pei shyne / most in felicite - 
He can abate / pe fresshnes of her 
flours - 
The bri3t sonne / clipsen with his shours - 
Make hem plunge / from her sees lowe - 
Magre be my3t / of alle these conquer- 
ours - 15 
ffortune hath hem / from her whele 
ythrowe - 


3 

Considerith pis / 3e folkes that be wys- 
And it enprentith / in 30oure memorial - 
Like bensaumple / wiche pat at Parys- 
I fonde depict / oones in a wal - 20 
fful notably / as I reherce shal - 

Ther of frensshe clerkis / takyng aquein- 

taunce - 
I toke on me / to translatyn al - 
Oute of be frensshe / machabres daunce - 


4 
By whos avys / and counceil atte pe 
leste - 25 
Thoru3 her steryng / - and her mocioun - 
I obeide / vn to her requeste - 
Ther of to make / a playn translacioun - 
In englissh tonge / of entencioun - 
That proude folkes / wiche pat be stout 
& bold- 30 
As in a mirrour / to for in her resoun- 
Her ougly fine / may cleerly ther bihold - 


5 
By exaumple / bat pei in her ententis - 
Amende her lif / in euery manere age - 


On the MS see p. 124 note. 


The wiche daunce / at seint Innocen- 
tis - 35 

Portreied is / with al be surpluage- 

To shewe pis worlde / is but a pilgrim- 
age: 

3ove vn to vs / our lyves to correcte - 

And to declare / the fyne of oure pas- 
sage: 

Ri3t anoon / my stile I wole directe+ 4o 


6 
Verba auctoris 


O creatures / 3e that be reasonable - 
The lyf : desiring / wiche is eternal - 

3e may se here - doctrine ful notable - 
Soure lif to lede / wiche pat is mortal - 
Ther by to lerne / in especial - 45 
Howe 3e shul trace / be daunce of 

Machabre - 

To man & womman / yliche natural - 
ffor deth ne spareth / hy ne lowe degre: 


i] 
In bis mirrour / euery wi3t may finde - 
That him bihoveth / to goo vpon pis 
daunce - 50 
Who goth to forn / or who shal goo be 
hinde - 
Al dependith / in goddis ordinaunce - 
Wherfore eche man / lowly take his 
chaunce - 
Deeth spareth not / pore ne blood royal - 
Eche man pberfore / haue in remem- 


braunce - 55 
Of o mater / god hath forged al- 
8 
Deeth to the Pope* _— 


O 3ee bat be set / most hie in dignite 

Of alle estatis / in erthe spiritual 

And like as Petir had be souereinte 
Overe be chirche / and statis temporal 60 
Vpon pis daunce / 3e firste begyn shal 
As moste worthy lorde / and gouernour 
ffor al be worship / of 30ure astate papal 
And of lordship / to god is the honour 


9 
The Pope aunswerith 
First me bihoueth / pis daunce for to 
lede - 65 
Wich sat in erbe / hiest in my see- 


1This and other stanza-headings are in the margin 
of the MS 


132 JOHN LYDGATE 


The state ful perillous / ho so takith 
hede - 

To occupie / Petris dignite - 

But al for that / deth I may not fle- 

On his daunce / with other for to trace - 

ffor wich / al honour / who prudently 
can se: 

Is litel worth / that dope so sone pace : 


10 
Deeth to the Emperour 
Sir Emperour / lorde of al the ground - 
Souerein prince / and hiest of noblesse - 
Se must forsake / of golde 30ur appil 


round : 75 
Septre and swerd / and al 30ure hy 
prowesse - 


Behinde leve / 30ur tresour and ricch- 
esse - 

And with othir / to my daunce obeie - 

A3ein my my3t / is worth noon hardi- 
nesse - 

Adamis children / alle bei moste deie- 


11 


The Emperour answerith 
I note to whom / pat I may (me) apele- 
Touching deth / wiche doth me so con- 
streine - 
There is no gein / to helpe my querele - 
But spade / and pikois / my graue to 
ateyne - 
A simple shete / ther is no more to 
seyne - 85 
To wrappe in my body / and visage - 
Ther vpon sore / I may compleine - 
That lordis grete / haue litel avauntage - 


12 

Deeth to pe cardinal 
Se be abaisshid / it semeth and in drede - 
Sir cardinal / it shewith by 3oure chere - 
But 3it for thy / 3e folowe shulle in 

dede - 
With opir folke / my daunce for to lere- 
Soure grete aray / al shal bileven here- 
Soure hatte of reed / 30ure vesture of 
grete cost- 
Alle these pbingis / rekenyd wele y 
fere - 95 
In greet honour / good avis is lost - 


81. Bracketed word from Harley 116. 


13 
The cardinal answerith - 
I haue grete cause / certis this is no 


faille - 

To bene abaisshid / and greetly drede 
me: 

Seth deeth is come / me sodeinly to as- 
saille - 

That I shal neuere / her aftir clothed 
be - I00 


In grys ne ermyn / like to my degre - 
My hatte of reed / leue eke in distresse 
By wiche I haue / lyved wel and see - 
Howe pat al Joie / endith in heuynesse - 


14 
Deeth to the kyng- 
O noble kyng / moste worpi of renoun - 
Come forbe anone / for al 30ure worpi- 
nesse - 
That somtyme had / aboute 30w envir- 
oun: 
Greet rialte / and passing hy noblesse - 
But rizt anoone / (for) al 3oure grete 


hynes - 

Sool fro 3oure men / in hast 3e shul it 
lete - IIo 

Who moste aboundib / here in greet 
ricches - 

Shal bere with hym / but a sengle shete - 


15 
A The kyng answerip - 
I haue not lernyd / here a forn to 


daunce - 

No daunce in sooth / of footyng so 
sauage - 

Wherfore I see / by clere demon- 
straunce - 115 


What pride is worth / force or hy lyn- 


age: 
Deeth al fordope / this is his vsage- 
Greet and smale / pat in pis worlde 


soiourne - 

Ho is most meke / I hold he is most 
sage - 

ffor he shal al to dede asshes tourne- 120 


16 
Deeth to pe Patriarke - 
Sir Patriarke / alle 3oure humble chere - 
Ne quite 30w not / ne 30ure humilite - 
Soure double crosse / of gold and stones 
clere - 
Soure power hoole / and al 3oure dignite - 


THE DANCE MACABRE 133 


Some othir shal / of verrey equite- 125 
Possede anoone / as I reherce can- 

Trustib neuere / that 3e shulle pope be- 
ffor foly hope / deceiveth many a man- 


17 
The Patriarke aunswerip - 


Worldly honour / greet tresour & rich- 
esse - 

Han me deceivid / sothfastly in dede - 730 

Myn olde Ioies / be turned to tristesse - 

What vailith it / suche tresour to pos- 
sede - 

Hy clymbyng vp / a falle hath for his 
mede - 

Grete estates / folke wasten oute of 
noumbre - 

Who mountith hy / it is sure and no 
drede 135 

Greet berthen / dope hym ofte encom- 
bre: 

18 

Deeth to pe constable - 

It is my ri3t / to reste and 30w con- 
streine - 

With vs to daunce / my maister sir 
Constable - 

ffor more strong / ban euere was Char- 
lemayne - 

Deeth hath aforced / and more wor- 
shipable - 140 

ffor hardines / ne kny3thood / pis is no 
fable - 

Ne stronge armvre / of plates ne of 
mayle - 

What geyneth armes / of folkes moste 
notable - 

Whan cruel deeth / lest hem to assaille - 


19 
The constable answerip - 
My purpos was / and hool enten- 


cioun - 145 
To assaille castelles / and mi3ty forter- 
esses - 


And bringe folke / vn to subieccioun - 

To seke honour & fame / and grete 
richesses - 

But I se wel / bat al worldly prowesses 

Deeth can abate / wich is a grete dis- 


pite - 150 
To him al oone / sorwe and eke swet- 
nesses - 


ffor a3ein deeth / is founden no respite - 


20 
Deeth to pe Archebisshop - 
Sir Archebisshoppe / whi do 3e 30w 
withdrawe - 
So frowardly / as it were by disdeyn - 
Se muste aproche / to my mortel lawe- 
It to contrarie / it nere not but in veyn- 
ffor day by day / pere is noon othir geyn- 
Deeth at be hande / pursueth euery 
coost - 
Prest and dette / mote be 3olde a3ein- 
And at o day / men counten wip her 
oost - 160 
21 
The Archebisshoppe - answerith - 


Allas I woote not / what partie for to 
flee - 
ffor drede of dethe / I haue so grete 
distresse - 
To ascape his my3t / I can no refute se- 
That who so knewe / his constreint and 
duresse - 
He wolde take resoum to maistresse- 165 
A dewe my tresour / my pompe and pride 
also - 
My peintid chaumbres / my port & my 
fresshnesse - 
ffor thing that bihoveth / nedes must 
be do- 
22 
Deth to pe Baroun - 
3e pat amonge lordis / and barouns - 
Han had so longe / worship and re- 
noun - 170 
fforz3ete 30ure trumpetis / and 3oure 
clariouns - 
This is no dreme / ne simulacioun - 
Somtime 3oure custome / and entencioun - 
Was with ladies / to daunce in be shade - 
But ofte it happith / in conclusioun - 175 
That o man brekith / pat a nopir made - 


23 
The Baroun or the kny3t answerith -——~ 
Ful ofte sipe / I haue bene auctorised - 
To hie emprises / and binges of greet 
fame - 
Of hie and lowe / my thanke also 
deuised - 
Cherisshed wib ladies / and wymmen hie 
of name: 180 
Ne neuere on me / was put no defame - 
In lordis court / wiche pat was notable - 


a 


134 JOHN LYDGATE 


But deebis strook / hath made me so 
lame ; Cer 

Vndre heuene / in erpe / is no thing 
stable - 


24 
Deeth to pe lady of grete astate - 
Come forbe anone / my lady and Prin- 
cesse - 185 
Se muste also / goo vp on this daunce - 
Not may availle / 3oure grete straunge- 
nesse - 
Nouber 30ure beute / ne 30ure greet 
plesaunce - 
Soure riche aray / ne 3oure daliaunce - 
That svmtyme / cowde so many holde an 
honde - 190 
In loue for al / 30ure double variaunce 
Ye mote as nowe / pis footing vndir- 
stonde - 


25 
The lady answerith - 
Allas I see / ther is none othir boote - 
Deeth hath in erthe / no lady ne mais- 


tresse - 
And on his daunce / 3it muste (1) nedis 
foote - 195 


ffor bere nys qwene contesse ne duchesse - 
ffouringe in bounte / ne in fairnesse - 
That she of deeth / mote debes trace 


sewe - 

ffor to (oure) bewte / and countirfeet 
fresshnesse - 

(Oure) rympled age / seith fare wele 
a dewe: 200 


26 

Deeth to pe Bisshoppe - 

My lorde sir Bisshoppe / with 3oure 
mytre & croos 

ffor al 3oure ricchesse / sothly I ensure - 

ffor al 3oure tresour / so longe kept in 
cloos - 

Soure worldly goodes / and goodes of 
nature - 

And of 30ure sheep / be dredly goostly 
cure: 205 

With charge committid / to 3oure pre- 
lacie - 

ffor to acounte / 3e shulle be brou3te to 
lure - 

No wi3t is sure / pat clymbeth ouere hie - 


27 
The Bisshoppe answertp - 
My herte truly / is nouber glad ne myrie 


Of sodein tidinges / wiche pat 3e 
bring 210 

My fest is turned / in to a simple ferye- 

That for discomfort / me list no bing 
syng - 

The worlde contrarie nowe / vn to me 
in workyng - 

That alle folkes / can so disherite - 

He pat al withhalt / allas at oure part- 
ing - 215 

And al shal passe / saue only oure 
merite - 


28 
Deeth to pe Squier - 
Come forth sir Squier / riz3t fresshe of 
3oure aray- 
That can of daunces / al be newe gise- 
Thou3 3e bare armes / fressh horsed 
3isterday - 
With spere and shelde / at 3oure vnkoube 
deuise - 220 
And toke on 30w / so many hy emprise 
Daunceth with vs / it wil no bettir be - 
Ther is no socour / in no manere wise: 
ffor no man may / fro debes stroke fle: 


29 
The Squier aunswerith - 
Sipen pat debe / me holdith in his 
lace - 225 
Set shal y speke / o worde or y pase- 
A dieu al myrbe / a dieu nowe al solace - 
A dieu my ladies / somtime so fressh of 
face - 
A dieu beute / plesaunce and solace - 
Of debes chaunge / euery day is 
prime - 230 
Thinkeb on 3oure soules / or bat deth 
manace - 
ffor al shal rote / and no man wote what 
tyme - 


30 
Deeth to pe Abbot - 
Come forth sir Abbot / wip 30ure brood 
hatte - 
Beeth not abaisshed / bou3 3e haue ri3t - 
Greet is 30ur hood / 3our bely large & 
fatte - 235 
Se mote come daunce / pbou3 3e be no 
ping 1i3t - 
Leve vp 30ure abbey / to some othir 
wi3t - 
Soure eir is of age / 3o0ure state to 
occupie - 


THE DANCE MACABRE 135 


Who pat is fattest / I haue hym behi3t - 
In his graue / shal sonnest putrefie - 240 


31 
The Abbot answerip: 
Of thi bretis / haue I noon envie- 
That I shal nowe / leve al gouernaunce - 
But pat I shal / as a cloistrer dye- 
This doth to me / passinge grete grev- 
aunce - 244 
Mi liberte / nor my greet habondaunce - 
What may availe / in any manere wise- 
Sit axe I mercy / with hertly repen- 
taunce - 
Thou3 in diynge / to late men hem 
avise - 


32 

Deeth to the Abbesse - 
And 3e my lady / gentil dame Abbesse - 
Wipb 30ure mantels / furred large and 
wide - 250 
Soure veile 30ure wymple / passinge of 

greet richesse- 
And beddis softe / 3e mote nowe leie a 
side - 

ffor to bis daunce / I shal be 3oure 


guyde - 

Thou3 3e be tendre / and born of gentil 
blood - 

While pat 3e lyve / for 3oure silfe 
prouide - 255 

ffor aftir deeth / no man hath no good: 


33 
The Abbesse : answerith - 
Allas that deeth / hath bus for me or- 
deined - 
That in no wise / I may it not declyne 
Thou3 it so be / ful ofte I haue con- 


streyned - 
Brest and throte / my notes out to 
twyne- 260 


My erickes round / vernysshed for to 

_ shyne: 

Vngirt ful ofte (to walke at be large - 

Thus cruell deth doth all estates fyne 

Who hath no chippe muste rowe in bote 
or barge) 


244. The second half-line reads in the B-recen- 
sion somwhat the lesse grevaunce. 
262-4. Inserted from Harley 116; Selden is 
blank after ofte, and Bodley 221, Laud, 
lack line 7 of the stanza. Trinity and 
Ellesmere agree with Harley, reading shyp, 

ship in line 264. 


34 
Deeth to pe Bally: 
Come forpe sir bailly / that knowen al 


pe gise- 265 
By 3oure office / of troube and ri3twis- 
nes - 


3e must come / to a newe assise- 
Extorciouns / and wronges to redres - 

3e be somonyd / as lawe bit expres - 
To 3elde acountes / be luge wole 30w 


charge - 270 
Wiche hath ordeyned / to exclude al 
falsnes - 


That euery man / shal bere his owne 
charge - 


35 
The Bayly - answerith - 
O pou lorde god / this is an hard 
iourne - 
To suche a fourme / I tooke but litel 
hede - 
Mi chaunge is turned / and bat for- 


thinkipb me- 275 
Sumtyme wip Iuges / what me list to 
spede - 


Lay in my my3t / by fauour or for mede - 

But sithen bere is / no rescws by 
bataille - 

I holde hym wys / pat cowde see in 
dede - 

Ajein deeth / pat none apele may 
vaille - 280 


36 
Deeth to pe Astronomere - 
Come forpe maister / bat loken vp so 
ferre: 
With Instrumentis / of Astronomy - 
To take be grees / and hei3te of euery 
sterre - 
What may availe / al 3o0ure astrologie- 
Sethen Adam and / alle the Genola- 


gie- 285 
Made ferst of god / to walke vppon pe 
grounde - 


Deeth dooth areste / bus seith The(o)lo- 
gie- 
And al shal die / for an appil round - 


274. Harley reads, “To the which aforne,” etc. 

275. Trinity, Harley, read chaunce; Ellesmere as 
Selden. 

285. Harley and the B-recension read: “Sith of 
Adam all pe Genelogie”. 


136 JOHN LYDGATE 


37 
The Astronomere answerith 


For al my craft / kunnynge or science - 

I can not finde / no prouisioun - 290 

Ne in the sterris / serche oute no de- 
fence - 

By domefiynge / ne calculacioun - 

Safe finally / in conclusioun - 

ffor to discrive / oure kunnynge euery- 
dele - 

Ther is no more / by sentence of re- 
soun - 295 

Who lyueth ari3t / mote nedis dye wele - 


38 
Deeth to pe Burgeys: 
Sir burgeis / what do 3e lenger tarie- 
ffor al 30ure aver / and 3oure greet 
ricchesse : 
Thou3 3e be straunge / deynous & con- 
trarie - 
To this daunce / 3e mote 30w nedis 
dresse - 300 
ffor 30ure tresour / plente and largesse - 
ffrom obere it cam / and shal vnto 
straungers - 
He is a fool / that in suche bysynes - 
Woot not for whom / he stuffith his 
garners - 


39 
The Burgeis - aunswerith - 
Certis to me / it is greet displesaunce - 305 
To leve al this / and may it not assure: 
Houses rentes / tresour and substaunce - 
Deeth al fordobe / suche is his nature - 
Therfore / wys is no creature - 
That set his herte / on good bat moot 


disseuere - 310 
The worlde it lente / and he mot it 
(recure) - 


And who most hath / lopest dieth euere - 


40 
Deeth to pe Chanoun - 
And 3e sir Chanoun / with many grete 
prebende - 
Se may no lenger / haue distribucioun - 
Of golde and siluer / largely to dis- 
pende - 315 
ffor bere is nowe / no consolacioun - 


311. Selden, Laud, Bodley 221, read recouere; 
Harley, Trinity, Ellesmere, read recure. 


But daunce with vs / for al 3oure hie 
renoun - 
ffor 3e of deeth / stonde vppon pe brink - 
Se may ther of / haue no dilacioun - 
Deeth comyth ay / whan men lest on 
him bink - 320 
41 
The Chanoun answerip - 
My benefices / with many personage - 
God wote ful lite / may me nowe com- 
forte - 
Deeth hath of me / so grete avauntage - 
Al my ricches / may me not disporte - 
Amys of grys / bei wole aj3ein re- 
sorte - 325 
Vn to be worlde /surplys and prebende- 
Al is veinglorie / truly to reporte- 
To die wel / eche man shulde entende - 


42 
Deeth to pe Marchaunt - 
Se riche Marchaunt / 3e mote loke hider- 
warde - 
That passid haue / many diuers 


londe - 330 
On hors on foot / hauynge moste re- 
ward - 


To lucre and wynnyng / as I vndirstond 

But nowe to daunce / 3e mote 3eue me 
30ure honde - 

ffor al 3oure labour / ful litel availeth 
30W - 

A dieu veinglorie / bope of free and 
bonde - 335 

No more coueite pan pei pat haue ynow - 


43 
The Marchaunt answerip: 
By manie an hil / and many a straunge 
vale - 
I haue traueilid / with my marchandise - 
Ouere be see / do carie many a bale- 
To sundry Iles / mo ban I can 


deuise - 340 
My herte Inwarde / ay fret with couet- 
ise: 


But al for nou3t / nowe deeth doip me 
constreine - 

By wiche I seie / by recorde of the wise - 

Who al embraceth / litel shal restreine - 


44 
Deeth to pe Chartereuz - 
Seue me 30ure hond / wib chekis dede 
& pale: 345 


THE DANCE MACABRE 137 


Causid of wacche / and longe abstinence - 
Sir chartereux / and 3oure silfe avale- 
Vn to this daunce / with humble pa- 
cience - 
To stryve a3ein / may be no resistence - 
Lenger to lyve / set not 30ure mem- 
orie: 350 
Thou3 I be lothsom / as in apparence - 
Aboue alle men / deth hath be victorie- 


45 
The Chartereux aunswerith 
Unto be worlde / I was dede longe 
agone - 
By my ordre / and my professioun - 
Thou3 euery man / be he neuere so 
stronge- 355 
Dredith to die / by kindly mocioun - 
Aftir his flesshly Inclinacioun - 
But plese it to god / my soule for to 
borowe - 
ffrom fendis my3t / and from dampna- 
cioun - 
Some bene to day / bat shulle not be to 
morwe - 360 


46 
Deeth to pe Seriaunt 
Come forbe sir Sergant / with 3oure 
statly mace- 
Make no defence / ne no rebellioun - 
Not may availe / to grucche in pis cace- 
Thou3 3e be deynous / of condicioun - 
ffor nouther pele / ne proteccioun- 365 
May 30w fraunchise / to do nature 
wrong 
ffor bere is noone / so sturdy cham- 
pioun - 
Thou3 he be my3ty / anober is as 
stronge - 


47 
The Sergant answerith 
Howe dare pis debe / sette on me 
areste- 
That am pe kinges chosen officere- 370 
Wiche 3isterday / bope west and este - 
Min office dide / ful surquidous of chere- 
But nowe pis day / I am arestid here- 
And may not flee / pbou3 I hadde it 
sworn - 
Eche man is lothe / to die ferre and 
nere- 375 
That hath not lerned / for to die aforn 


353. The rime is imperfect in the A-recension; the 
B-recension reads —dede ago ful longe. 


48 
Deeth to pe Monke 
Sir monke also / with 3oure blak habite - 
3e may no lenger / holde here soiour - 
Ther is no bing / bat may 30w here 
respite - 
Aj3ein my my3t / 30w for to socour- 380 
5e mote acounte / touching 3oure labour 
Howe 3e haue spent it / in dede worde 
& pboust - 
To erbe and asshes / turneth euery flour - 
The life of man / is but a bing of 
nou3t - 


49 
The monke answerith 
I hadde leuere / in pe cloistre be- 385 
At my book / and studie my seruice- 
Wiche is a place / contemplatif to se- 
But I haue spent / my life in many vice- 
Liche as a fool / dissolut and nyce - 
God of his mercy / graunt me repent- 
aunce - 390 
By chere outwarde / harde (is) to 
deuise - 
Alle be not mery / wich pat men se 
daunce - 


50 
Deeth to be vsurere- 
Thou vsurer / loke vp and biholde- 
Vn to wynnygne / pou settist al bi peine- 
Whos couetise / wexib neuere colde- 395 
Thy gredy pbrust / so sore be doth con- 
streine - 
But pou shalt neuere / pi desire ateyne - 
Such an etik / thin herte frete shal - 
That but of pite / god his hande re- 


freine - 
O perillous strook / shal make be lese 
al - 400 


a! 

The wsurere answerith 
Nowe me bihoueth / sodeinly to dey- 
Wiche is to me / grete peine & greet 

grevaunce - 
Socour to finde / I see no maner wey - 
Of golde ne siluer / by no chevesaunce - 
Deeth boru3 his haste / abit no pur- 

veaunce - 405 
Of folkes blinde / pat can not look wel - 


391. I insert ts from Bodley 221 and Laud; not in 
Selden, Harley, or Trinity. 

402. Ellesmere is with Selden; Bodley 221, Har- 
ley, and Trinity read and grevaunce. 


if 


138 


fful ofte happith / by kinde or fatal 
chaunce - 

Some haue faire ey3en / bat see neuere 
a dele - 


52 

7 The pore man to pe vsurere 
Vsure to god / is ful grete offence - 
And in his si3t / a grete abusioun- 410 
The pore borwith / par cas for indi- 

gence . fer tz 
The riche lent / by fals collucioun - 
Only for lucre in his entencioun - 
Deeth shal hem bope / to acountes fette - 
To make rekenynge by computacioun - 
No man is quit / pat is bihinde of dette 


53 
Deeth to pe ffisician 
Maister of phisik / wiche on 3oure vryne 
So loke and gase / and stare a3ein be 
sonne 


ffor al 3oure craft / and studie of medi- 
cine 

Al pe practyk / and sience bat 3e 
konne 420 


Sour lyves cours / so ferforpe is Ironne 

A3ein my my3t / 3oure craft may not 
endure 

ffor al be golde / bat 3e ther by haue 
wonne 

Good leche is he / bat can him silfe re- 
cure 


54 

The ffisician answerith 
fful longe a goo / that I vn to phisik - 425 
Sette my witt / and my dilligence - 
In speculatif / and also in practik- 
To gete a name / boru3 myn excellence - 
To finde oute / a3ens pestilence - 
Preseruatives / to staunche it and to 

fine - 430 
But I dar seie / shortly in sentence - 
Ajens deeth / is worth no medicine - 


55 
Deeth to pe Amerous Squier 
Se bat be gentil / so fresshe and amer- 
ous - 
Of 3eres 30nge / flouringe in 30ure grene 
age - 
Lusty free / of herte eke desirous: 435 
fful of devises / and chaunge in 3oure 
corage - 


JOHN LYDGATE 


Plesaunt of port / of look and of visage - 
But al shal turne / in to asshes dede - 
ffor al bewte / is but a feint ymage- 
Wiche stelib a weye / or folkes can take 
hede - 440 


56 
The Squier answerip 
Allas - allas / I can nowe no socour: | 
Aj3ens dethe / for my silfe provide - 
A dieu of 30upbe / pe lusty fresshe flour 
A dieu veinglorie / of bewte and of 
pride - 
A dieu al seruice / of be god Cupide- 44: 
A dieu my ladies / so fressh so wel be 
sein - 
ffor a3ein dethe / no ping may abide: 
And windes grete / goo doun with litil 
reyn: 


57 

Deeth to pe gentil womman amerous 

Come forbe maistresse / of 3eris 30nge 
and grene- 

Wiche holde 3oure silfe / of bewte 
souereyne - 450 

As faire as 3ee / was somtyme Polycene - 

Penolope / and the quene Eleyne - 

dit on pis daunce / bei wente bobe 
tweine - 

And so shulle 3e / for al 30ure straunge- 
nesse - 

Thou3 daunger longe / in loue hab lad 
30ure reine: 455 

Arestid is / 3oure chaunge of doubil- 
nesse - 


58 
The gentil womman answerith 
O cruel deeth / bat sparest none estate 
To old and 3onge / bou art indifferent - 
To my bewte / pou hast yseide chek- 
mate - 
So hasty is / thi mortal Iugement 460 
ffor in my 30upe / this was myn entent - 
To my seruice / many a man to haue 
lured - 
But she is a fool / shortly in sentement - 
That in hir bewte / is to moche assurid - 


59 
Deeth to the man of lawe 
Sir aduocate / short processe for to 
make - 465 
3e mote come plete / afore be hize luge - 
Many a quarel / 3e haue vndirtake 


THE DANCE MACABRE 139 


And for lucre / to do folke refuge - 
But my fraunchise / is so large & huge: 
That Counceile none / availe may but 


troube- 470 
He skapib wisely / of deeth be greet 
deluge - 


To fore pe doom / who is not teint wip 
sloube - 


60 
The man of lawe answerith 
Of rizt and resoun / by naturis lawe- 
I can not putte / a3ein deeth no defence - 
Ne by no sleiz3te / me kepe ne wib- 
drawe - 475 
ffor al my wit / and my greet prudence - 
To make apele / from this dredful sent- 
ence - 
No ping in erthe / may a man preserve: 
A3eins his my3t / to make resistence - 
God quite al men / like as pei de- 
serve: 480 


61 
Deeth to pe Iourrour 
Maister Iurrour / wiche bat at assise 
And atte Shires / questes doste embrace - 
Departist londe / like to pi deuise - 
And who most 3af / moste stode in pi 
grace: 
The pore man / lost londe and place - 485 
ffor golde pou cowdest / folkes dis- 
herite - 
But nowe lete se / with pi teint face - 
To fore be Iuge / howe pou canst pe 
quite - 


62 
The Iourour answerith 
Somtyme I was clepid / in my cuntre- 
The belle wedir / and pat was nat a 
lite - 490 
Nou3t loued / but drad / of lowe and 
hie degre- 
ffor whom me list / by craft I coude 
endite - 
And hange the trewe / and pe theef 
respite - 
Al be cuntre / by my worde was lad: 
But I dar sey / shortly for to write- 495 
Of my dethe / many a man is glad- 


63 
Deeth to pe Minstral 
O thou mynstral / bat canst so note and 
pipe - 


Vnto folkes / for to do plesaunce- 

By pe ri3t honde / I shal anoone pe 
gripe - 

With these other / to goo vp on my 
daunce - 500 

There is no scape / neiber avoidaunce - 

On no side / to contrarie my sentence - 

ffor in Musik / by craft and acordaunce - 

Who maister is / shewe his (science) - 


64 
The minstral answerip 
This newe daunce / is to me so 


straunge - 505 
Wondir diuerse / and passingly contra- 
rie: 


The dredful fotyng / doth so ofte 
chaunge - 

And be mesures / so ofte sithes varie - 

Wiche nowe to me / is no ping neces- 
sarie - 

If it were so / bat I my3t asterte- 510 

But many a man / if I shal not tarie- 

Ofte daunceth / but no thing of herte- 


65 
Deeth to pe Tregetour 
Maistir Iohn Rikele / some tyme Trege- 
tour - 
Of noble Harry / kyng of Engelond - 
And of ffraunce / be mi3ty conquer- 
our - 515 
ffor alle be sleiztes / and turnyng of pin 
hond - 
Thou must come ner / this daunce to 
vndirstond - 
Nou3t may auaile / al thi conclusions - 
ffor deeth shortly / nouber on see ne 
lond - 
Is nou3t deceivid / by none illusions 520 


66 

The Tregetour answerith 
What may availe / magik natural - 
Or any craft / shewid by apparence - 
Or cours of sterres / aboue celestial - 
Or of be heuene / al the influence - 
A3eins deeth / to stonde at defence: 525 
Legerdemeyn / nowe helpib me ri3t 

nou3t - 


504. Selden, shewe his sentence; Ellesmere, 
Laud, Bodley 221, shew his science; Trinity, 
shewep his science; Harley, shall schew his 
science. 


140 JOHN LYDGATE 


ffarewel my craft / and al suche sapi- 
ence - 

ffor deth moo maistris / 3it pan I hath 
wroust - 


67 
Deeth to / pe Persoun 
O sir curat / bat bene nowe here pre- 
sent - 
That had 3oure worldly Inclinacioun - 530 
Soure herte entire / 3oure studie and en- 
tent 
Moste on 3oure tithes / and oblacioun - 
Wiche shulde haue bene / of conuersa- 
cioun - 
Mirrour vn to othir / li3t and exaum- 
plarie - 
Like 3oure desert / shal be 3oure guer- 
doun - 535 
And to eche labour / dewe is pe salarie- 


68 
The Persoun answerith 
Maugre my wille / I must condiscende - 
ffor deeth assailib / euery lifly thing - 
Here in bis worlde / who can compre- 
hende - 
His sodein stroke / and his vynware com- 
yng: 540 
ffarewele tithis / and farewel myn off- 
ryng - 
I mote goo counte / in ordre by and by- 
And for my shepe / make a iust rek- 
enyng - 
Whom he aquyteth / I holde he is happy - 


69 

Deeth to pe laborer: 
Thou laborer / wiche in sorwe and 

peine - 
Hast lad pi life / in ful greet trauaile - 
Thou moste eke daunce / and perfore not 

disdeyne - 

ffor if bou do / it may pee not auaile- 
And cause why / pat I pee assaile- 
Is oonly pis / from pee to disseuere- 550 
The fals worlde / pat can so folke faile - 
He is a fool / bat weneth to lyne euere - 


70 
The laborer answerith 
I haue wisshed / aftir deeth ful ofte- 
Al be pat I wolde haue fled hym now - 
I had leuere / to haue leyn vnsofte- 555 
In winde and reyn / & haue gone at 
plow - 


With spade & pikoys / and labourid for 
my prow: 

Dolve and diched / and at be carte 
goone - 

ffor I may seie / and telle pleinly howe: 

In pis worlde here / ther is reste 
none - 560 


71 
Deeth to pe frere menour 
Sir cordeler / to 30w myn hand is 
rau3t - 
To pis daunce / 30w to conveie and lede- 
Wiche in 3oure preching / haue ful ofte 
Itau3t - 
Howe pat I am / moste gastful for to 
drede - 
Al be pat folke / take berof noon hede- 
Sit is per noon / so stronge ne so hardy - 
But deth dare reste / and let for no 
mede - 567 
ffor deeth eche hour / is present and 
redy - 


72 

The frere answerip 

What may pis be / bat in bis world no 
man - 

Here to abide / may haue no surete- 570 

Strengpe ricchesse / ne what so pat he 
can - 

Worldly wisdom / al is but vanite - 

In grete astate / ne in pouerte 

Is no ping found / bat may fro debe 
defende - 

ffor wiche I seie / to hie and lowe 
degre - 575 

Wys is bat synner / pat dooth his life 
amende - 


73 
Deeth to the childe 
Litel enfante / bat were but late yborn 
Shape in bis worlde / to haue no ples 
aunce - 
Thou must with other / bat goone here 
to forn- 
Be lad in haste / by fatal ordinaunce - 
Lerne of newe / to goo on my daunce- 
Ther may noon age / escape in soth 
berfroo: 582 
Lete euery wi3t / haue pis in remem- 
braunce 
Who lengest lyveth / moost shal suffre 
woo: 


THE DANCE MACABRE 141 


74 
The childe answerip 
A-A-A-o worde I can not speke- 585 
I am so 30nge / I was bore 3isterday - 
Deeth is so hasty / on me to be wreke- 
And list no lenger / to make no delay - 
I cam but nowe / and nowe I goo my 
way - 
Of me no more / no tale shal be told - 590 
The wil of god / no man with stonde 
may - 
As sone dieth / a 3onge man as an old: 


75 

Deeth to the Clerke 
O 3e sir clerke / suppose 3e to be free: 
ffro my daunce / or 3o0ure selfe defende - 
That wende haue rysen / vn to hie degre - 
Of benefices / or some greet prebende- 
Who clymbeth hiest / some tyme shal 
dissende - 597 
Lat no man grucche / a3ens his fortune - 
But take in gree / what euere god hym 

sende - 

Wiche ponissheth al / whan tyme is 
oportune - 600 


76 

The clerke aunswerith - 

Shal I pat am / so 30nge a clerke nowe 
deye - 

ffro my seruice / and haue no bettir 
guerdoun - 

Is ther no geyn / ne no bettir weye - 

No sure fraunchise / ne proteccioun - 

Deeth makith alweie / a short conclu- 
sioun - 605 

To late ware / whan men bene on pe 
brinke - 

The worlde shal faile / and al posses- 
sioun - 

ffor moche faileth / of ping pat foles 
thinke - 


77 
Deeth to pe Hermyte 

Se pat haue lived / longe in wildernesse - 
And bere contynued longe in abstinence - 
At pe laste / 3et 3e mote 30w dresse- 617 
Of my daunce / to haue experience - 
ffor bere a3ein / is no recistence 
Take nowe leue / of pin Ermytage- 
Wherfore eche man / aduerte this sent- 

ence - 615 
That pis life here / is no sure heritage - 


78 

The Hermite answerip 

Life in desert / callid solitarie - 

May a3ein debe / haue no respite ne 
space - tl 

At vnset our / his comyng doth not 
tarie - 

And for my part / welcome be goddes 
grace: 620 

Thonkyng hym / with humble chere and 
face: 

Of al his 3iftes / and greet habondaunce - 

ffynally / affermynge in this place - 


No man is riche / bat lackith suffisaunce - 5 “° 


79 
Deeth azein to pe Hermite 
That is wel seide / and bus shulde euery 


wi3t - 625 
Thanke his god / and alle his wittis 
dresse - 


To loue and drede hym / with al his 


herte & my3t- 

Seth deeth to ascape / may be no siker- 
nesse - 

As men deserue / god quit of ri3twis- 
nesse - 


To riche and pore / vppon euery side - 630 

A bettir lessoun / ber can no clerke ex- 
presse - 

Than til to morwe / is no man sure to 
abide - 


80 
The kyng ligging dede and eten of 
wormes 
3e folke bat lokyn / vpon this portrature - 
Biholdyng here / alle the states daunce - 
Seeth what 3e bene / and what is 3oure 


nature - 635 
Mete vn to wormes / not ellis in sub- 
staunce - 


And haue pis mirrour euere in remem- 
braunce - 

Howe (I) lie here / somtyme crownyd 
kyng - 

To alle estates a trewe resemblaunce - 

That wormes food / is fyne of oure 
lyuyng - 640 

81 

Machabre pe doctour 

Man is not ellis / platly for to thinke- 

But as a winde / wiche is transitorie - 

Passinge ay forbe / wheber he wake or 
winke - 


Stee y 


142 JOHN LYDGATE 


Towarde bis daunce / haue pis in memo- 
rie: 
Remembringe ay / per is no bet vic- 
torie - 645 
In pis life here / ban fle synne at pe 
leste - 
Than shul 3e regne / in paradys with 
glorie - 
Happy is he / bat maketh in heuene his 
feste - 
82 
Sit ther be folke / mo pan six or sevene 
Reckles of lyf / in many maner wise 650 
Like as ber were / helle none nor heuene 
Suche false errour / lete euery man dis- 
pice 
ffor hooly seintis / and oolde clerkis wise 
Writen contrarie / her falsnes to deface 
To lyue wel / take this for best em- 
price 655 
Is moche worth / whan men shul hens 
pace 
83 
Lenvoye de Translatour 
O 3e my lordis ,/ and maistres alle in fere 


Of auenture / bat shal bis daunce rede 
Lowly I preie / with al myn herte entere 
To correcte / where as 3e see nede 660 
ffor nou3t ellis / I axe for my mede 
But goodly support / of this transla- 
cioun 

And with fauour / to sowponaile drede 
Benignely / in 30ure correccioun 


Out of be frensshe / I drewe it of en- 
tente 665 
Not worde by worde / but folwynge be 
substaunce ; 
And fro Paris / to Engelonde it sente 
Oonly of purpos / 30w to do plesaunce 
Rude of langage / I was not born in 


fraunce 
Haue me excusid / my name is Iohn 
Lidgate 670 


Of her tunge / I haue no suffisaunce 
Her corious metris / in englisshe to 
translate 


Here endith the daunce of Deeth 


EPITHALAMIUM FOR GLOUCESTER 


Humphrey duke of Gloucester, youngest of Henry the Fourth’s four sons, 
was born about 1390, some years before his father’s seizure of the English crown, 
He took no conspicuous part in English politics until the renewal of the French 
war by Henry the Fifth, and the absence of all his brothers in France, devolved 
on him the governance of England. Either his own temperament, or a shrewd 
perception of the future of the English middle class, then led him to championship 
of the bourgeoisie. He became in consequence the idol of the people, and also 
in consequence, a man suspect by his own class. With the death of Henry the 
Fifth (1422) and of Thomas duke of Clarence (1421) in France, the adminis- 
tration of the Anglo-French dominions was divided between John duke of Bed- 
ford, who remained abroad to prosecute the war, and Humphrey duke of Glou- 
cester, who was entrusted with the protectorate of England. In this duty, and 
in the guardianship of the infant Henry VI, there were associated with Glou- 
cester the Lords of Council, among whom the most powerful was Beaufort bishop 
of Winchester, illegitimate half-brother of Henry the Fourth, a man of great 
wealth and great ability, and strongly inimical to Gloucester. The remainder of 
Humphrey’s life, until his death under suspicion of poison in 1447, is, politically, 
a struggle between his party and that of Beaufort and Suffolk. 

Were this political fencing the whole of Gloucester’s activity, we should 
have to term him a factious schemer, and little more. But his life has other as- 


EPITHALAMIUM FOR GLOUCESTER 143 


pects. Interesting, at least, are his relations with Jacqueline of Hainault, who 
became his wife in spite of political prudence; interesting also, in their own way, 
are his desertion of Jacqueline for Eleanor Cobham, the protest of English women 
to Parliament against his conduct, the later trial of Eleanor for sorcery, and that 
taper-bearing public penitence of the duchess through London streets, “hoodless 
save a kerchef”, which is so astonishing a fact in Humphrey’s life. 

There is much that is violent and ignoble in all this; Gloucester’s private 
life, indeed, was one of excess; but we can turn from such facts to a far finer 
side of Humphrey, his love of books and his patronage of men of letters. The 
man who first founded the library of the University of Oxford, the man who 
corresponded with Italian scholars and rewarded English writers, has a claim 
on the gratitude of students which outweighs many political errors. Humphrey 
after his elevation to power was reckless, selfish, unstable; he carried the soldier’s 
temperament into affairs where caution and diplomacy were needed. But the 
afterworld has forgotten the politician, and forgiven the patron of letters. 

Our admiration of his patronage of literature has, however, to be qualified 
by the sort of literature which he patronized. Humphrey had no Virgil to en- 
courage and reward, not even the Tasso of a Renaissance despot. Like an Este 
or a Medici, though, he dispensed his favors. There is, as Tout has said, “some- 
thing almost Italian about Gloucester, both in his literary and his political ca- 
reer.” His personal vices, his restless instability, his condottiere swagger, his 
real love of learning and generosity to learning, are those of Ferrara or Florence. 
It is, however, too much to say, as Vickers says (op. cit. below, p. 348), that 
“what Petrarch did for the world, Humphrey did for England.” The interest 
which Humphrey showed in the classics was indeed greater than that evinced by 
his royal brother; and Aeneas Sylvius commended the better Latin style which 
Gloucester’s zeal for polite learning had introduced into England. But the blend 
of classicism, medievalism, and the new lyric self-expression which is in Petrarch 
is very differently proportioned in Humphrey, with far more of the medieval, 
as his literary patronage shows. Among the works dedicated to him or executed 
for him are Capgrave’s commentary on Genesis, Gilbert Kymer’s Dietarium, 
Nicholas Upton’s De officio militari, Whethamstede’s Granarium, the anonymous 
translation of Palladius De re rustica, Lydgate’s translation of the De Casibus of 
Boccaccio, and Hoccleve’s rendition of a story from the Gesta Romanorum. An- 
other of Boccaccio’s works, the Italian poem I] Corbaccio,—an attack upon 
women,—has recently come to light, says Vickers, pp. 377-79, in an English 
version by one of Gloucester’s Latin secretaries. The duke’s “poet and orator” 
Titus Livius wrote at his bidding a Latin biography of Henry the Fifth; Livius, 
and other of Humphrey’s secretaries, were Italians, and Gloucester was in cor- 
respondence with Italian scholars. Aretino translated the Politics of Aristotle 
for him; Pier Candido Decembrio dedicated to him the Latin version of Plato’s 
Republic. Gloucester’s intellectual curiosity was keen, and he read both French 
and Latin. But his princely gift of manuscripts to the University of Oxford is 
the most truly humanistic act of his life. 

His taste, as revealed in his choice of books for translation into English, 
does not appear to us humanistic. His election of the Fall of Princes for Eng- 
lishing, was, however, quite in keeping with the preference of his age for large- 
scale didactics ; and as a landholder he may have been interested in the translation 
of Palladius, which he seems to have supervised himself. Both from that work 


144 JOHN LYDGATE 


and from Lydgate’s translation we get a few glimpses of Gloucester personally, 
though for the most part beclouded with extravagant conventional laudation. But 
other occasional poems by Lydgate,—the Epithalamium and the appeal for money 
printed below, especially the curious composition bewailing Humphrey’s de- 
sertion of Jacqueline and endeavoring to explain it by witchcraft,—throw a little 
more light on the man. That Gloucester was reckless at Rouen we can read in the 
lines of John Page and of Hoccleve; that he was piously cruel to heretics we can 
read in the commendations of Lydgate and of the Palladius-translator ; that Lon- 
don citizens, despite their indignation at his treatment of Jacqueline, agreed with 
him against Beaufort in his narrowly militaristic policy, his opposition to the 
liberation of the duke of Orléans, we can find from the chronicles. He was faith- 
less to his unfortunate foreign wife; he was injudicious and selfish in matters 
political. But his generosity to scholars, his manner to the common citizen, have 
kept his memory green as “the good Duke Humphrey”. 

Jacqueline of Hainault, the princess to whom this poem is addressed, was the 
last of the Holland-Wittelsbach line to hold the throne of Holland and Seeland. 
She was only sixteen on accession, and but a part of her father’s dominions recog- 
nized her, Holland going over to her uncle, John the Pitiless. She determined to 
marry her cousin, John of Brabant, hoping thus to strengthen herself against her 
uncle; but when this hope failed, and her husband became personally odious to 
her, she fled to England in 1421 for protection and for support in her plea to the 
Pope for a divorce. Undoubtedly her dominions were a pawn in the political 
game, but Henry the Fifth moved cautiously, unwilling to antagonize the duke 
of Burgundy, who also had his eye on Jacqueline’s territories, and whose sup- 
port was earnestly desired by England against France. Gloucester, however, 
was influenced by no motives of international diplomacy. He and Jacqueline 
fell in love with each other; and as Henry the Fifth’s death soon left Gloucester 
unchecked, he married the now divorced Jacqueline, and in 1424 entered Holland 
with an English force to support her claims. Suddenly thereafter, perhaps be- 
cause of Burgundy’s suggestion of a personal duel to decide matters, perhaps 
for private reasons, Humphrey dropped the campaign and returned to England; 
the duke of Burgundy seized the deserted and helpless Jacqueline, who vainly 
implored her husband’s aid; and she survived her fall but a few years, recogniz- 
ing her marriage to Humphrey as void in 1428. Gloucester then married Eleanor 
Cobham, a former lady-in-waiting of Jacqueline, whom he had brought back 
from Holland with him, and for whom his passion had aroused general indigna- 
tion and disgust. His popularity with Londoners was seriously shaken by his 
conduct to his deserted wife; in 1428 a group of women entered Parliament 
and formally protested against his neglect of Jacqueline and connection with 
Eleanor. Also, there exists in contemporary manuscript a poem, marked as 
Lydgate’s, expressing strong sympathy for Jacqueline; in this it is interesting 
to observe the suggestion of sorcery as explanation of Gloucester’s errors, 
inasmuch as it was for witchcraft that Eleanor of Gloucester later suffered 
punishment. Its anxious attempt to excuse Humphrey is notable in view of the 
praise which Hoccleve and Lydgate lavish on him for his “stableness”,—a 
quality entirely foreign to Humphrey. 

The poem below is far more conventional, and its complacent ignorance of 
the actual political situation, of the danger to the Burgundian alliance and to 
the French war which Humphrey was courting, is truly monastic. Lydgate real- 


EPITHALAMIUM FOR GLOUCESTER 145 


ized only that a compliment to his patron’s beloved would please his patron; and 

this huddle of extravagant encomiums and conventional formulae must have 

been presented to Jacqueline not only before her marriage to Humphrey in the 
autumn of 1422, but before the death of Henry V in August of that year, since he 
is spoken of as living, in line 48 here. As Jacqueline was in England by June 

1421, the limits for composition of this poem are fairly narrow. 

It survives in three copies, Shirley's MS now Trin. Coll. Cambridge R 3,20 
(whence my text), and two transcripts from Shirley in Brit. Mus. Harley 2251 
and Adds. 29729; the latter is in the hand of John Stow the antiquary, who died 
in 1605. For notes on Stow and on Shirley see pp. 191-94 below; and on the MS 
here used see p. 79 n., above. 

SELECT REFERENCE LIST VI 

Vickers, K. H., Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, London, 1907. With extensive biblio- 
graphy. 

Anstey, Munimenta Academica, 1868. See pp. 758-772 for lists of books given by 
Humphrey to Oxford. 

Tout, T. F., art. on Gloucester in the DNB. 

Palladius, De re rustica, transl. See p. 202 here. 

Gloucester’s desertion of Jacqueline, poem by Lydgate?, printed by me in Anglia 27 :381. 

The Siege of Rouen, by John Page; see Gairdner’s Hist. Collections, Camden Society, 
1876. 

The relief of Calais by a force under Gloucester is described in a Ballad against the 
Flemings, printed by MacCracken in Anglia 33:283 as Lydgate’s. 

For Humphrey’s protest against the liberation of Orléans see Speed’s Hist. of Great 
Britain (1611), p. 660; see Vickers, pp. 264-5. 

For the King’s reply see Stevenson, Letters and Papers, ii :451-460, Rolls Series, 1861-4. 

For the London women’s protest against Gloucester’s treatment of his wife see the 
Chronicon rerum gestarum in monasterio S. Albani, prefixed to the Rolls Series 
ed. of the Annales Sancti Albani, 1:20. 

For the public penance of Eleanor Cobham, duchess of Gloucester, see the ‘Lament 
of the Duchess of Gloucester”, pr. by Hardwick in the Cambridge Antiq. Soc. 
Communications, i:177 (1855), and from a shorter text by Wright, Polit. Poems, 
ii:205, by Fliigel in Anglia 26:177, by Dyboski, EETS vol. of Songs and Carols, 
1908, p. 95. 

Gloucester and his duchess Eleanor both appear in A Mirror for Magistrates; see Hasle- 
wood’s 1815 ed., pp. 112, 128 of vol. ii. 


[MS Trinity College Cambridge R 3, 20, foll. 158-64] 


AND NOWE HERE BEGYNNEPE A COMENDABLE BALADE BY LYDEGATE DAUN JOHAN AT pE 
REUERENCE OF MY LADY OF HOLAND- AND OF MY LORD OF GLOUCESTRE: TO FORE 
pE DAY OF PEYRE MARYAGE IN bE DESYROUS TYME OF PEYRE TRUWE LOVYNG 


Thorugh gladde aspectis / of be god 
Cupyde 

And ful acorde of his moder deere 

fful offt sypes / list aforne provyde 

By cours eterne / of be sterres cleere 


Becized words are underscored by Shirley in the 


Hertis in loue / for to Joyne in feere 5 
Thoroughe bonde of feyth perpetuelly 
tendure 
By influence of god / and of nature 
2 
Pe heven aboue / disposebe many thinges 
Which witt of man can not comprehende 


146 JOHN LYDGATE 


Pe faatal ordre / of lordes and of 
kynges 10 

To make somme / in honnour hye as- 
cende 

And somme al so ful lowe to descende / 

And in loue eeke / to lacen and con- 
streyne 

Hertes tenbrace / in Jubiters cheyne 


3 
Pus cam in first / pe knotte of ally- 
aunce 5 
Betweene provynces / and worpy regy- 
ouns 
ffolkes to sette in pees / and acordaunce 
To beon alloone / in beyre affeccouns 
And to exclude / alle devysyouns 
Of contekk stryff of batayle and of 
werres 20 
Pe first cause pourtreyed in pe sterres 


4 
ffor noman may pbordeynaunce eschuwe 
Thinges disposed / by cours celestyal 
Ner destenye / to voyde nor remuwe 
But oonly god / pat lordshipebe al 25 
ffor thorughe his might moost Imperyal 
Peternal lord / moost discrete and saage 
He brought in first / bordre of maryage 


Ensaumple in bookes / ber beon moo 
pane oon 

Pinward pithth / whoo so list to 
charge 30 

Executid is / of so yoore agoon 

Recorde I take / of Calydoyne and Arge 

Howe poo landes / so broode / so wyde 
/ so large 

Were maked oon / pe story list not feyne 

By maryage / wheeche a fore were 
tweyne 35 


6 


And in cronycles autentyk and olde 

Many a story / of Antiquytee 

Vn to pis pourpoos / rehersed is and 
tolde 

Howe maryages / haue grounde and 
cause be 

Betwene landes / of pees and vnytee 40 

And here to forne / as made is remem- 
braunce 

Pe werre stynt of England and of 
ffraunce 


7 
And as I hope of hert and menyng truwe 
Pe mortal werre / ceesse shal and fyne 
Betwene boo boobe / and pees ageyne 
renuwe 45 
To make loue / with cleer beemys shyne 
By be meene of hir / bat heeght Kath- 
eryne 
Ioyned til oon / his deedis can you telle 
Henry be fyffte / of knighthoode sours 
and welle 


8 
And firperdovne / for to specefye 50 
Pe dewe of grace / distille shal and reyne 
Pees and acorde / for to multeplye 
In be boundes here of oure brettaygne 
To fynde a wey / wherby we may at- 
teyne 
Pat Duchye of holand / by hool af- 
feccoun 55 
May beo allyed / with Brutus Albyoun 


9 
Pat bey may beo / oon body and oon 
hert 
Rooted on feyth / devoyde of double- 
nesse 
And eeke to seen cleerly / and aduerte 
A nuwe sonne / to shynen of glad- 


nesse 60 
In boobe londes / texcluden al derk- 
nesse 


Of oolde hatred and of al rancour 
Brought in by meene / of oon pat is 
be floure 


10 

Thoroughe oute pe worlde / called of 
wommanheed 

Truwe ensaumple and welle of al goode- 
nesse 6. 

Benyngne of poorte / roote of goodely- 
heed 

Soobefast myrrour of beaute and fayr- 
nesse 

I mene of holand / be goodely fresshe 
duchesse 

Called Jaques / whas birth for to termyne 

Is by descent / Imperyal of lyne 70 


11 
As Hester meeke / and as Judith saage 
fhouring in youpe / lyke to Polixseene 
Secree feythful / as Dydo of Cartage 
Constant of hert / lyche Ecuba be 
qweene 


EPITHALAMIUM FOR GLOUCESTER 147 


And as Lucresse / in loue truwe and 

cleene 75 
Of bountee fredame / and of gentylesse 
She may be called / wel lady and mays- 


tresse 
12 
ffeyre was Heleyne / liche as bookes 
tellebe 


And renommed as of seemlynesse 
But sheo in goodnesse / fer aboue ex- 


cellebe 80 
To rekken hir trouthe and hir stedfast- 
nesse 


Hir gouuernaunce / and hir hye noblesse 

Pat if she shal shortly (beo) compre- 
hendid 

In hir is no thing bat might beon amend- 
ed 


13 

Per to she is descreete / and wonder 
sadde 85 

In hir appoorte / who so list taake heede 

Right avysee / and wommanly eeke 
gladde 

And dame prudence / doope ay hir brydel 
leede 

ffortune and Grace and Raysoun eeke in 
deede 

In alle hir werkis / with hir beon al- 
lyed 90 

Pat thoroughe be worlde / hir naame is 
magnefyed 


14 
To be poore she is / also ful mercyable 
fful of pytee / and of compassyoun 
And of nature / list not to beo vengeable 
Poughe hit so beo / sheo haue occasy- 
oun 95 
Pat I suppose nowe in no regyoun 
Was neuer a better / at alle assayes 
founden 
So miche vertu / doope in hir habounden 


15 
A heven it is / to beon in hir presence 
Who list consydre / hir governaunce 
at al 100 
Whas goodely looke / in verray ex- 
istence 
So aungellyk / and so celestyal 
So femynyne / and in especial 
Hir eyeghen sayne / who so looke weel 
fforyoven is oure wraththe euery deel 105 


16 
And hir colours / beon black whyte and 
rede 
Pe reed in trouthe / tookenebe stabul- 
nesse 
And pe black / whoo so takebe heede 
Signefyeth / parfyt soburnesse 
Pe whyte also / is tooken of clen- 
nesse TI0 
And eeke hir word / is in verray soope 
Ce bien raysoun / al pat euer she doope 


17 
And sith she is / by discent of blood 
Pe grettest borne / oone of hem on lyve 
And per with al / moost vertuous and 


goode 115 
Pe trouthe pleynly / yif I shal des- 
cryve 


Suche grace I hope / of nuwe shal ar- 
ryue 

With hir komyng / thoroughe al pis 
lande 

Pat ber shal beo a perpetuelle bande 


18 

Parfourmyng vp / by knott of mary- 
age 120 

With helpe of god / betweene pis lady 
bright 

And oon pat is soopely of his aage 

Thoroughe al bis worlde / oon pe best 
knyght 

And best pourveyed / of manhood and 
of might 

In pees and werre / thoroughe his ex- 
cellence 125 

And is also / of wisdam and prudence 


19 
Moost renommed / for to rekken al 
ffrome Eest to west / as of heghe prow- 
esse 
In daring doo / and deedes marcyal 
He passep alle / thorughe his worpy- 


nesse 130 
Pat yif I shall / pe trouthe cleer ex- 
presse 


He habe deserved / thoroughe his 
knyghtly name 
To beo regystred / in pe hous of ffaame 


20 
Egally ye with be worpy nyen 
ffor with Parys he habe comlynesse 135 


148 JOHN LYDGATE 


In trouth of loue / with Troyllus he 
doope shyne 

And with Hectour / he habe eeke hardy- 
nesse 

With Tedeus he habe fredam and gentyl- 
nesse 

Wal of Bretayne / by manly vyolence 

Ageyne hir foomen / to standen at de- 
fence I40 


Zi 

Slouth eschuwing / he doobe his witt 
applye 

To reede in bookis /wheeche pat beon 
moral 

In hooly writt with be Allegorye 

He him delytebe / to looke in specyal 

In vnderstonding / is noone to him 
egal 145 

Of his estate expert in poetrye 

With parfounde feeling of Phylosofye 


22 


With Salamoun habe he sapyence 

ffaame of knighthoode / with Cesar 
Julius 

Of rethoryk and / eeke of eloquence 150 

Equypollent with Marcus Tulius 

With Hamibal he is victorious 

Lyche vn to Pompey / for his hyeghe 
renoun 

And to gouuerne / egale with Cypyoun 


23 
Pis Martys sone / and soobefastly his 
heyre 155 
So wolde god of his eternal might 
He lIoyned were with hir bat is so feyre 
Pe fresshe duchesse / of whome I speek 
now right 
Sith he in hert is hir truwe knyght 
ffor whome he wrytepe / in goode aven- 
ture 160 
Sanz plus vous belle perpetuelly tendure 


24 


Pane were pis lande in ful sikurnesse 
Ageyns passaute / of alle oure mortell 


foone 
ffarewell panne / al trouble and hevy- 
nesse 165 


Yif so were pees landes / were alle oon 


And god I prey / it may beo doone 
anoon 

Of his might / so gracyously ordeyne 

Pat pees fynal / were sette betweene hem 
tweyne 


25 
And I dare weel afferme fynally 
Thorughe oute pis lande / of hye and 
lowe degree 170 
Pat alle folkes / preyen ful specyally 
Pis thing in haast may executed be 
And pou pat art oon and twoo and thre 
Pis gracious werk dispoose for be best 
ffor to conclude pe fyne of beyre re- 
quest 175 


26 
And ymeneus / pow fortune pis matere 
Thoroughe helpe of Iuvo / nexst of pyne 
allye 
Maake a knotte feythful and entiere 
As whylome was betweene Phylogenye 
And Mercurye eeke / so hyegh a bove 
pe skye 180 
Wher pat Clyo / and eeke Calyope 
Sange with hir sustren / in noumbre 
thryes three 


27 


And alle yee goddes beobe of oon acorde 
Pat haue youre dwelling / aboue be 


firmament 
And yee goddesses / devoyde of al des- 
corde 185 


Beobe weel willy / and also dilygent 
And bowe fortune / bee also of assent 
Pis neodful thing / texecut yerne 
Thorugh youre power / which pt is 


eterne 
Lenvoye 
Pryncesse of bountee / of fredam Em- 
paresse 190 


Pe verray loodsterre / of al goodelyhede 

Lowly I prey / vn to youre hyeghe 
noblesse 

Of my Rudenesse / not to taken heed 

And wher so it be / pis bille pat yee 
reed 

Habe mercy ay / on myn Ignoraunce 

Sith I it made / bitwix hope and dreed 

Of hoole entent / yowe for tyl do ple- 
saunce 


LETTER TO GLOUCESTER 149 


LETTER TO GLOUCESTER 


These stanzas exist in four manuscripts, so far as I know.. The soundest 
and probably the oldest text is that here printed from Brit. Mus. Harley 2255, 
in which the poem is without heading. In Brit. Mus, Lansdowne 699 it is 
headed “Litera missura domini Johannis Lidgate ad ducem Gloucester”; and in 
the sister-volumes Brit. Mus. Harley 2251 and Adds. 34360 there is a colophon 
which adds to the description as in Lansdowne the words “in tempore trans- 
lacionis libri Bochasii pro Oportunitate pecunie.” These two MSS are in this 
part of their contents derived from a lost volume in the hand of Lydgate’s con- 
temporary Shirley, which gives their account of the poem some validity; more is 
derived from comparing this poem with the prologue to the Fall of Princes 
(liber Bochasius), book iii, in which Humphrey’s generosity is rapturously ac- 
knowledged, and in which there are some similarities of phrasing to the text 
below. We may conjecture that between the thanks of that prologue and this 
begging-letter there intervened a money-gift to Lydgate from his patron. 

Lydgate, like Hoccleve in his numerous pleas for money, is aware that he 
must catch and hold his superior’s attention. Gloucester’s tastes were doubtless 
known to his protégé, and the metaphors here worked so elaborately,—medical, 
nautical, monetary,—are well adapted to please Humphrey. The proverbs are 
popular literary stuff, as is the refrain; and the employment of a stanza-form 
slightly different from that of the Fall of Princes may be noted. The occurrence 
of another begging-letter in the Fall of Princes, book iti, lines 3837-3871, is a 
somewhat curious fact as coming so soon, in space at least, after acknowledg- 
ment of a gift in the prologue to that same book. For this begging-letter see 
Anglia 38 :133-34. 

The poem was printed from this MS by Nicolas in his Chronicle of London 
(1827), p. 268; it was printed from Harley 2251 by Halliwell in his MinPo, p. 
49, with the colophon as heading; it was printed from this MS by me in Anglia 
38:125-26. On our MS see p. 79 n., above; on Harley 2251, see Anglia 28 :24. 


[Brit. Mus. Harley 2255, fol. 45b] 


Riht myhty prynce / and it be your wille 

Condescende / leiser for to take 

To seen the content / of this litil bille 

Which whan I wrot / myn hand I felte 
quake 

Tokne of mornyng / weryd clothis 
blake 5 

Cause my purs / was falle in gret rerage 

Lynyng outward / his guttys wer out 
shake 

Oonly for lak / of plate / and of coign- 
age 


2 
I souhte leechys / for a restoratiff 
In whom I fond / no consolacioun —_10 
Appotecaryes / for a confortatiff 
Dragge nor dya / was noon in Bury 
toun 


Botme of his stomak / was tournyd vp 
so doun 

A laxatif / did hym so gret outrage 

Made him slendre / by a consump- 
cioun 15 

Oonly for lak / of plate / and of coign- 
age 


3 

Ship was ther noon / nor seilis reed of 
hewe 

The wynd froward / to make hem ther 
to londe 

The flood was passyd / and sodeynly of 
newe 

A lowh ground ebbe / was faste by the 
stronde 20 


No maryneer durste / take on honde 
To caste an ankir / for streihtnesse of 
passage 


150 JOHN LYDGATE 


The custom skars / as folk may vndir- 
stonde 
Oonly for lak of plate / and of coignage 


4 


Ther was no tokne / sent doun from the 
Tour 25 

As any gossomer / the countirpeys was 
liht 

A ffretyng Etyk / causyd his langour 

By a cotidian / which heeld hym day & 
nyht 

Sol and Luna / wer clypsyd of ther liht 

Ther was no cros / nor preent of no 
visage 30 

His lynyng dirk / ther wer no platys 
briht 

Oonly for lak / and scarsete of coign- 
age 


5 

Harde to likke hony / out of a marbil 
stoon 

ffor ther is nouthir / licour nor mois- 
ture 

An ernest grote / whan it is dronke and 
goon 35 

Bargeyn of marchauntys / stant in aven- 
ture 


My purs and I / be callyd to the lure 

Off indigence / our stuff / leyd in mor- 
gage 

But ye my lord / may al our soor recure 

With a receyt / of plate and of coign- 
age 40 

6 
Nat sugre plate / maad by thappotecarye 
Plate of briht metal / yevith a mery soun 


In boklers bury / is noon such letuary 

Gold is a cordial / gladdest confeccioun 

Ageyn Etiques / of oold consump- 
cioun 45 

Aurum potabile / for folk ferre ronne in 
age 

In quynt essence / best restauracioun 

With siluer plate / enprentyd with coign- 
age 


7 


O seely bille / whi art thu nat ashamyd 

So malapertly / to shewe out thy con- 
streynt 50 

But pouert hath / so nyh thy tonne at- 
tamyd 

That nichil habet / is cause of thy com- 
pleynt 

A drye tisyk / makith oold men ful 
feynt 

Reediest weye / to renewe ther corage 

Is a fressh dragge / of no spycis 
meynt 55 

But of a briht plate / enpreented with 
coignage 


8 


Thu mayst afferme / as for thyn excus 
Thy bareyn soyl / is sool and solitarye 
Of cros nor pyl / ther is no reclus 
Preent nor Impressioun / in al thy seyn- 
tuarye 60 
To conclude breefly / and nat tarye 
Ther is no noyse herd / in thyn hermyt- 
age 
God sende soone / a gladdere letuarye 
With a cleer soun / of plate / and of 
coignage 


Ext qd Lydgate 


THE FALE OF PRINCES 


(Extracts) 


Lydgate’s longest poem, the Fall of Princes, extending to more than 36,000 
lines in rime royal,! was not translated direct from the Latin prose of Boccac- 
cio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium which is its ultimate original, but is a free 
- paraphrase, with many changes and additions, of a French prose version of Boc- 


1 Stanzas of eight lines occasionally appear in envoys; see iv :3445 ff., v:1590 ff. and 1846 ff., 


1x :2017 ff.; also ix:3239 ff.. 3541 to close. 


FALL-OF PRINCES 151 


-caccio made by Laurent de Premierfait in 1409.1 Boccaccio is best known to the 
modern world by his Decameron, and he made his strongest impression on his 
contemporary Chaucer by the poems which Chaucer worked over into the Knight’s 
Tale and Troilus and Criseyde; but England and France generally, in the period 
before the full Renaissance, took more interest in Boccaccio’s Latin encyclo- 
pedic works, written during the latter half of his life——the De Casibus, the De 
Claris Mulieribus, the De Genealogia Deorum. In France, at the book-loving 
court of Charles V, where the king and the royal dukes of Anjou, Berri, and 
Bourbon encouraged translators and paid liberally to scribes and poets, as also 
at the brilliant rival court of the dukes of Burgundy, there flourished the earliest 
modern school of professional littérateurs. Possibly the most famous member 
of the group was Christine de Pisan, one of the first women to earn her living by 
her pen; but Laurent de Premierfait, translator and scribe, was not the least of 
the circle. He translated Cicero for the duke of Bourbon, Boccaccio for the 
duke of Berri; but though he laboriously manufactured a translation of the 
Decameron? through the intervention of a Latin prose rendering done by an 
Italian monk, it is his version of the De Casibus which has kept his name alive 
with modern students. 

The plan of the De Casibus is simple. A long procession of unfortunates, 
‘from Adam and Eve to King John of France taken prisoner at Poitiers in 1356, 
passes lamenting before Boccaccio as he sits in his study recording the “tragedy” 
of each. The series of mournful narratives, for which Biblical and classical 
‘history are both drawn upon, is varied in several ways: by disputes between For- 
‘tune and Poverty, between Boccaccio and Brunhilda, Atreus and Thyestes, etc. ; 
or by digressions of author’s comment on the vices which cause these “tragedies” ; 
or by brief group-chapters headed “Conventus Dolentium’’, “Miseri Quidam”, 
“Pauci Flentes”, and so on, in which several or many persons are dismissed with 
a mere mention. The whole work is in the Latin divided into nine books, of 
nine to twenty-seven chapters each, usually of about twenty; and the first four 
books have brief prologues. 

Laurent twice translated the De Casibus; his first and more literal rendering 
“was made in 1400; the second, much amplified, was apparently the only French 
version known to Lydgate. The general plan of the second recension follows 
that of Boccaccio; thus, in the first book the division into nineteen chapters is 
preserved and the same figures appear. But all the personages who in Boccaccio 
-pass rapidly as members of a group are by Laurent treated in detail, the “Con- 
ventus” chapters thus becoming among the longest of the work, and the scheme 
‘losing the effect of alternate expansion and contraction given it on Boccaccio’s 
plan. Laurent also diverges and amplifies wherever excuse for divergence offers ; 
the mention by Boccaccio of a place, a custom, a person, sends Laurent off on a 


*For Boccaccio’s Latin and the French see:—Hortis, Sulle opere latine del Boccaccio, 
Trieste, 1879; E. Koeppel, Laurents de Premierfait u. John Lydgates Bearbeitungen von 
Boccaccios De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, Munich, 1885; see Hauvette, De Laurentio Pri- 
mofato, Paris, 1903, also his paper in “Entre Camarades,” Paris, 1901, pp. 279-297. Liberal 
excerpts from the Latin and the French texts will be found in vol. iv of Bergen’s ed. of the 
Fall of Princes, 1927. 

* A copy of this rendering, and of Premierfait’s transl., are in Brit. Mus. Royal 19 E i. 
The French transl. is also in Brit. Mus. Adds. 34322-3; and Humphrey of Gloucester’s copy 
is in Paris, Bibl. nat. fonds frangais 12421. 


152 JOHN LYDGATE 


detour. Brief though many of these additions are, they are so numerous and their 
character is often so much.that of footnotes that the narrative is clogged while 
it is extended. 

Laurent’s prose was rendered into English stanzaic verse by Lydgate at 
the command of Humphrey duke of Gloucester, brother of Henry the Fifth, an 
Englishman as royal in his patronage of letters and as turbulent in his meddling 
with politics as were his French compeers. The date at which the work was 
undertaken may be deduced from the opening prologue, in which Lydgate speaks 
of Gloucester as Lieutenant of England during Henry VI’s absence in France 

* (1430-Jan. 1432) and commends the duke for dealings with heretics which prob- 
ably refer to the Lollard executions of 1431. For the ending of the work we 
have only Lydgate’s remark, in the prologue to book viii, that he is over sixty 
years of age. As he had in the prologue to Thebes spoken of himself as nearly 
fifty, students are inclined to place Thebes and the Fall of Princes in the inter- 
vening years, and to assign to the longer work four-fifths of the time. 

In Lydgate’s hands the De Casibus was again expanded.1 He adds, of 
course, at will to the narratives, drawing both from classical writers like Ovid 
and from medieval encyclopedists and commentators; he sometimes cuts the 
stories, as with Theseus and with Agamemnon, and may send the reader either to 
Chaucer or to his own work; he alters and develops, as in the Orpheus and the 

‘ Althaea narratives of book i; and he everywhere diverges into moralization. He 
has too much fact-material ready to his hand in Laurent to wander into a didactic 
morass as he does in his version of Aesop, where the slender narrative is engulfed in 
moral comment. And for a part of his moralizings here Lydgate has excuse; 

‘Gloucester commanded him to follow up each tragedy by “a Lenvoy conveyed 
by reason’, which should point the lesson (see ii:145 ff.). These envoys con- 


*The usual recension of the Fall of Princes, from which so far as I know only Harley 

1766 differs, runs as follows :— 

Book i:—Prologue, 67 stanzas. 23 chapters, Adam to Canace. Includes Nimrod, Saturn and 
the Golden Age, Cadmus, Jason, Oedipus, Atreus and Thyestes, Theseus, Althaea, 
Hercules, Orpheus, Priam, Samson, and a defence of women. 

Book ii:—Prologue, 23 stanzas. 31 chapters, Saul to Hostilius, with an envoy “Rome, Re- 
member.” Includes The Human Body and the Body Politic, Mucius Scaevola, Lucrece, 
Virginia, Jeroboam, Ahab, Dido (with a satirical envoy to widows), Cyrus, Midas, 
Belshazzar, Croesus, Romulus. 

Book iii:—Prologue, 23 stanzas. 27 chapters, opened by a dialogue between Fortune and Poy- 
erty and closing with Artaxerxes and Darius. Lucrece again, Coriolanus, the Golden 
Age, Alcibiades, Haman, Esther. 

Book iv :—Prologue on Poets and Writing, 30 stanzas, 26 chapters, Marcus Manlius to Arsinoé. 
Includes a discussion of Roman triumphs and crowns, Dionysius of Syracuse, Alexander, 
Agathocles the “crowned ass”, Brennus. 

Book v:—No prologue. 33 chapters, from a discourse against pride in beauty to Jugurtha. 
Includes Regulus, Scipio, Hannibal, the Gracchi. 

Book vi:—No prologue. 16 chapters, opening with a dialogue between Fortune and Boccaccio, 
and closing with Antony and Cleopatra. Includes Caius Marius, Julius Caesar, Cicero, 
a chapter against those who defame rhetoric, Pompey. 

Book vii:—No prologue. 9 chapters, from Antony the younger to the fall of Jerusalem. 
Includes Herod, Nero, and the dispute between Messalina, Caligula, and Tiberius. The 
Golden World is described,—see Book i also. 

Book viii:—Prologue, 29 stanzas. 27 chapters, from Domitian to Rosamond. Includes many 
emperors, Constantine, Julian, Arthur, Boethius. 

Book ix:—No prologue. 38 chapters, from Mauritius to John of France. Includes Brunhilde, 
Mohammed, Lombard emperors, Pope Boniface, Ugolino of Pisa. 

Envoy to Gloucester. 


FALL OF PRINCES 153 


stitute a structural change as compared with Laurent’s work; and in some 
small measure they restore the narrative rhythm of Boccaccio’s group-chapters 
set among the detail-chapters. But for a good deal of the difference in size 
between the French and the English we may look to Lydgate’s rambling and ver- 
bose method of narration. When Laurent says that Nimrod “fut maistre des 
veneurs et eut entre eulx seigneurie”, this becomes in Lydgate— 


He was callid cheeff prynce of venerie 
Desirous euer for to han victorie 

Off beestis wilde to be put in memorie 

And haue a pris amongis these champiouns 
Tigres to daunte bores and leouns. 


Ther was no beeste in wodes so sauage 

That durste ageyn hym make resistence 

His furious ire so mortal was and rage 

The erthe quook for feer off his presence. 1:1060 ff. 


Again, in the inquiry of Cadmus at the oracle of Apollo, i:1898 ff., we find :-— 


To what parti that he myhte drawe 

He praied the god to wissyn him & reede 
Sum tokne shewe or sum maner lawe 
Onto what ile that he myhte hym speede 
Or that he wolde graciously hym leede 
Where as he myhte bilden a cite 

That were accordyng for hym & his meyne 


And to Apollo he dede sacrefise 

And maad to hym his oblacioun 

The god requeryng goodli to deuise 

To what lond or to what regeoun 

For his duellyng and habitacioun 

He sholde drawe withoute mor obstacle 
For hym and hise to make his habitacle. 


And yet a third stanza is required by Lydgate before he can relinquish the fact 
of Cadmus’ question to Apollo, and proceed to the answer. 

Not all of his expansions of Laurent are as unsuccessful as these. There 
is perhaps some narrative method, some attempt at dramatic delay, in the Althaea 
tragedy. Laurent says of Meleager’s slaying of his uncles that Althaea, hearing 
the news, fell senseless, “et apres pour la vengeance du delict que feist Meleager 
elle bouta au feu le tison que elle auoit garde iusques lors.” Lydgate makes eight 
stanzas out of the queen’s hesitation between filial love and the desire for re- 
venge, but sorely muddles his effect by allusions to the Fates and to Fortune. 
See i: 4943 ff. 

The repetitive tendency, whether of a narrative point, a moral lesson, a 
stylistic formula, or a line-mould, is, as already said, Lydgate’s most marked char- 
acteristic and his greatest failing. He can escape from it for an instant at a 
time, in a line or a pair of lines; see the examples above cited p. 81. Given a 
religious emotion and a good model, he can keep clear of his besetting sin for 


154 JOHN LYDGATE 


several verses, as here in i:1331-4. Laurent wrote:—‘“Dieu a mil mains / dieu 
a mil iauelots / dieu a mil arcs et manieres de pugnir les peches et les pecheurs.” 
This becomes in the English :— 


God hath a thousand handis to chastise 
A thousand dartis off punycioun 

A thousand bowes maad in vnkouth wise 
A thousand arblastic bent in his dongoun 


It is of such passages as this, or of the prayer of Theodosius, that Gray thought 
when he praised Lydgate for a “stiller kind of majesty.” 

But the felicity of a small number of lines, the dignity of a smaller number 
of passages, in the Fall of Princes, is overborne by the narrative failure of the 
whole, by its unvarying drone of misery, and in Lydgate’s hands by its aggres- 
sive sermonizing and its faults of style. One may insist on the antiquarian value 

of his prologues, on the interest of his attempts at humor (usually against women), 
and plead the crushing size of his commanded task; but the fact remains that he 
did not do his work as well as did Boccaccio or Laurent. The monotony which 
‘always threatens stories in a framework, a monotony so evident in Gower and 
‘in the Monk’s Tale, is here doubled by weakness and monotony of style. 

The Monk’s Tale and the Legend of Good Women were, however, con- 

stantly in Lydgate’s mind as he worked at the Fall of Princes. It never oc- 
curred to him that Chaucer’s voice in the former was as deliberately affected 
. as was the falsetto of Sir Thopas, or that each piece of work betrays the author’s 
weariness of his subject. In Lydgate’s eyes Chaucer, like Seneca and Boccaccio 
and Petrarch, was a zealous writer of “tragedies”. There is much about Chaucer 
in the Fall of Princes; but, as already said (p. 91 here), Lydgate’s procedure 
- regarding his master varies; he praises him lavishly, he often fears to “auaunce 
the penne” in rivalry, but again he leaves him unmentioned where we expect a 
reference, as in the Virginia or the Ugolino story, and he tells the Canace-story 
condemned by Chaucer. Of phrase-echo of the elder writer there is little here, 
as compared with the Troy Book or the Siege of Thebes. 

Naturally the bulk of Lydgate’s material comes from his French original ; 
-and there is no clear trace of his use of Boccaccio’s Latin. His phrasing, how- 
ever, would make it seem that he had recourse directly to Boccaccio; for after 
the formal introduction of Laurent in the opening prologue, Lydgate constantly 
speaks of his authority as “Bochas” or “John Bochas”, i.e. Boccaccio. Laurent 
had not done this, but had spoken in Boccaccio’s person, using the pronoun of the 
first person singular. 

The general plan of Boccaccio’s work remains clear through the changes 
‘and additions made by his translators; it was a plan and theme congenial to the 
age in which he lived. Though lacking utterly in the qualities which make Dante’s 
Inferno immortal, the De Casibus yet gropes among material not unlike that which 
‘Dante transformed. The half-scholarly, half-monkish figure of Boccaccio seated 
in his study and visited by the shades of fallen greatness bewailing their lot; the 
monstrous figure of Fortune dominating the scene; the varying of the “tragedies” 
by denunciations of women, praise of poverty and of “rhetoric”, by occasional 
dialogue-episodes,—these gathered together into this one book many of the philo- 
sophico-literary elements dear to the medieval mind. The connection of the 
always interesting theme of the mutability of Fortune with a list of imposing 


THE FALL OF PRINCES 155 


historical personages set a poetic fashion which persisted long. Chaucer dallied 
with it; the Burgundian Chastellain imitated it in his prose Temple de Bo- 
rcace; Laurent and Lydgate translated it ; it was followed later by Lodowick Lloyd’s 
-Pilgrimage of Princes, by Cavendish’s Visions, and by A Mirror for Magistrates ; 
‘Barclay, in his Ship of Fools, refers to Lydgate’s work and shows acquaintance 
with it; and it ultimately exerted its influence upon the historical plays of the 
Tudor age. That age, however, discovered that for purposes of art, the part is 
greater than the whole, and that tragedy isolated is far more impressive than 
tragedy massed; it discovered also that tragic effect was enhanced by the inter- 
polation of a lighter or a varied element. This latter truth may have hovered 
before Boccaccio when he interspersed dialogue and group-scene among his 
single-figure studies ; and when we look at the composition of the B? fragment of 
the Canterbury Tales or at the variety of its framework as a whole, we feel 
strongly that it was the craving for structural variety which led Chaucer, the 
potential dramatist, to hold up his earlier-written Monk’s Tale to scorn, and to 
abandon the Legend of Good Women. 

Lydgate’s work was popular in its time. Thirty or more MSS remain, and 
-selections from it appear in many fifteenth-century commonplace-books. It was 
twice printed by Pynson, in 1494 and 1527, by Tottel in 1554, and by Wayland 
in 1558. Much of the opening prologue was printed by Miss Spurgeon in her 
EETS Chaucer Allusions i:37-40, from MS Harley 1766; and for Dr. Bergen’s 


edition see below. 


Manuscripts of the Fall of Princes at present (1927) known to me are:— 

At Oxford :— 

In the Bodleian Library— 

Bodley 263: used as basis of the edition by Bergen as below. 
Bodley e Musaeo 1 (formerly 215). 
Hatton 2 (formerly 105). 
Rawlinson C 448. 
Corpus Christi College 242. 

In London :— 
British Museum Harley 1245, 1766, 3486, 4197, 4203. Fragment in Harley 2202 
Brit. Mus. Royal 18 B xxxi, Royal 18 D iv, Royal 18 D v. 
Brit. Mus. Sloane 4031. Eight leaves in Sloane 2452. 
Brit. Mus. Adds. 21410, impf. 
Brit. Mus. Adds. 39659, given by Baroness Zouche. 
Lambeth Palace Library 256. 

In Other Public Libraries. 
Rylands Eng. 2, formerly owned by the Earl of Jersey at Osterley Park. 
Hunterian S i. 5 at Glasgow University. 

In Private Possession. 
Rutland, or Belvoir Castle, owned by the Duke of Rutland. 
Longleat, owned by the Marquess of Bath. 
Mostyn, sold to Francis Edwards, 1920; now in the hands of Rosenbach, New 

York City. 
Wollaton Hall, Lord Middleton’s MS, sold in 1925 to Quaritch. 
Plimpton, owned by George A. Plimpton, New York City, formerly by F. W. 
Bourdillon. 

Phillipps 4254, in the hands of Rosenbach, New York City. 


156 JOHN LYDGATE 


Phillipps 4255, in the hands of Quaritch. 

Phillipps 8117, owned by Robert Garrett of Baltimore; bought 1905. 

Phillipps 8118, owned by John Gribbel of Philadelphia. 

Morgan 124, formerly owned by the Lee family, and by Henry White, now in the 
Morgan Collection, New York. 

Huntington 268, the Ecton Hall copy, in the Huntington Library, California. Impf. 
Bought in 1924. 

Extracts from the poem are common in late fifteenth-century MSS. The longest col- 
lection of such extracts known to me is in Harley 2251 of the Brit. Mus.; see 
also Trin. Coll. Cambridge R 3, 19 and R 3, 20, Ashmole 59, McClean 182, etc., 
and the “Proverbs of Lydgate” printed by de Worde. 

Two MSS mentioned in the Bernard Catalogus of 1697, owned by Abram Seller and by 
the Earl of Peterborough, I have not identified. (The former was destroyed by 
fire in 1700; see Dr. Bergen’s Bibliographical Introduction, p. 3.) 

The MS Royal 18 D iv bears at the foot of its first written page the arms of Tiptoft 
Earl of Worcester, died 1470; as the complicated marshaling shows the arms 
of Beauchamp duke of Warwick, it was probably executed for Tiptoft after his 
marriage, in 1446, with Cecily, daughter to the Earl of Salisbury and widow 
of Warwick. 

The MS Royal 18 D v bears at close, set into the text, the arms of Percy Earl of 
Northumberland, gartered. This and several other MSS are occasionally muti- 
lated or confused in sewing; the Corpus MS is both, its twelve opening leaves 
belonging between books v and vi. But the agreement in contents among most 
MSS is so close as to make the case of Harley 1766 the more conspicuous. 
This volume, which is ornamented with clumsy and garish pictures, looking as if 
wafered on to the margins and coarsely executed, has been extensively cut and 
rearranged as regards text. Most of books iii, iv, v, and vi, classical material, is 
not present, and the grouping of the chapters into books is not the usual one. 
The opening prologue and the final epilogue to Gloucester are there, but not the 
prologue to book iii with the thanks to him for his munificence. The codex 
also lacks the five stanzas of appeal to Gloucester for money which follow chap- 
ter 18, book iii, as lines 3837-3871; but this trait it shares with other texts, e.g. 
Rawlinson C 448, Bodley e Musaeo, Royal 18 D iv and v, Phillipps 4254. The 
lines appear, so far as I have noted, in Bodley 263, Harley 4197 and 4203, Hatton, 
Royal 18 B xxxi, and Morgan 124. In Anglia 36:121-36 I suggested that this 
envoy was a letter, appended by Lydgate to sheets which he submitted for Glou- 
cester’s inspection, and which in some copies became incorporated with the text. 
The duke’s habit of examining the work of his translators while it was in pro- 
gress may be inferred from the words of the Palladius-translator here cited, p. 206. 

Full descriptions of all MSS and prints of the Fall of Princes will be found in 

vol. iv of Dr. Henry Bergen’s edition of the poem for the Carnegie Institution, 1927; 

text in vols. i-iii, 1923. I am indebted to Dr. Bergen for much friendly help as to 

the MSS. 


FALL OF PRINCES: A 


157 


THE GENERAL PROLOGUE 
[MS Brit. Mus. Royal 18 D iv.] 


He that whilom dede his diligence 


- The book of bochas in frensch to trans- 


late 


*Out of latyn / he callid was laurence 


The tyme trewli remembrid and the date 
Theere whan kynge iohn / thoruh his 

mortail fate 5 
Was prisoner brouht / to this regiown 
Whan he first gan on this tra(n)slacioun 


2 


In his prologe affermynge off reson 

Artificeres / hauyng exercise 

Mai chaunge and turne bi good discre- 
cioun 10 

Shappis formys and newli hem deuyse 


‘Make and vnmake in many sondri wise 


As potteris which to that craft entende 


-Breke and renewe ther vesselis to amende 


3 
Thus men of craft may of due riht 15 


- That ben inventiff and han experience 


ffantasien in ther inwarde siht 
Deuises newe thoruh ther excellence 
Expert maisters han ther to licence 


-ffro good to beter for to chaunge a 


thinge 20 
And semblabli thes clerkis in writynge 


4 


Thynge that was maid of auctowrs hem 
beforn 
Thei may off newe finde and fantasie 


* Oute of olde chaff trie out ful clene corn 
- Mak it more fressh and lusti to the eie 25 


Ther subtil wit and ther labour applie 
With ther colours agreable off hewe 


- Make olde thinges for to seeme newe 


4 


5 
Afforn prouidyd that no presumpcion 
In ther chaungynge haue noon aucto- 
rite 30 


- And that meeknesse haue domynacion 


ffals envie that she not present be 

But that ther grounde with parfit charite 
Conueied be to ther avauntage 

Treuly rootid amyd off ther corage 35 


6 


Thus laurence fro hym envie excludid 

Thouh toforn hym translatid was this 
book 

Withynne hym silff he fulli hath con- 
cludid 

Vpon that labour / whan he caste his 
look 


‘He wolde ame(n)de it but first he for- 


sook. 40 
Presumpcion / and took to hym meeknes 
In his prologe / as he doth expresse 


7 


In which processe lik as I am lerid 

He in his tyme off connyng dede excelle 

In ther langage therfore he was re- 
querid 45 

Off estatis which can hym eek compelle 

Among hem holde of rethorik the welle 

To vnderfonge this Jabour thei hym 
preie 

And he ther request lowli dede obeie 


8 


*fful wel he felte the labour was not- 


able 50 

The fall of nobles with euery circum- 
staunce 

ffrom ther lordshippis dreedful & vn- 
stable 

How that thei fill to putte in remem- 
braunce : 

Therin to shewe fortunes variaunce 


»That other myhte as in a myrovr see 55 
‘In worldli worshipe may be no surete 


9 


Bi exaumple as ther is no rose 

Spryngyng in gardyns but ther be sum 
thorn 

Nor fairer blossum than nature list dis- 
pose 

Than may ther beute as men ha seyn to 
forn 60 

With bittir wyndis be fro ther braunchis 
born 


‘Nor noon so hih in his estat contune 
‘ffre fro thawaityng and daunger of for- 


tune 


158 JOHN LYDGATE 


10 


‘Wherfore bochas for a memoriall 
Considryng the grete dignytees 65 
Off worldli pryncis in ther power royall 
Grete emperours estatis and degrees 
How fortune hath cast them fro ther 


sees 

Nameli such as kowde hem silff not 
knowe 

fful sodeynli to make hem lyn ful lowe 70 


11 


This seide auctour avise and riht sad 

‘Hath gadred out / with rethoriques 
sueete 

‘In diuerse bookes / which that he hath 
rad 

Off philisophers / & many an old poete 

. Besied hym / bothe in cold & heete 75 

Out to compile / and writen as he fonde 

The fall of nobles in many dyuerse londe 


12 


Upon whos book in his translacion 

This seid laurence rehersyth in certeyn 

And holdith this in his opynyon 80 

‘Such language as opyn is & pleyn 

‘Is more acceptid as it is offte seyn 

Than strange termys which be not vnder- 
stande 

‘Namli to folkes / that duellen vp on 
lande 


13 


As he seith eek that his entencion 85 
Is to amenden / correcten and declare 
Nat to condempne of no presumpcion 
‘But to supporte / pleynli and to spare 
Thyng touched shortli off the stori bare 
Undir a stile breeff & compendious 90 
Hem to prolonge / whan thei ben ver- 
tuous 


14 


ffor a stori / which is nat pleynli told 
But constreyned / vndir wordes fewe 
ffor lak off trouth / wher thei be newe or 
old 
Men be report / kan nat the mater 
shewe 95 
Thes ookes grete be nat doune jhewe 
first at a strok / but bi longe processe 
Nor longe stories a woord may nat ex- 
presse 


85. As he seith, etc. MS Bodley reads And he, 
Ctce 


15 


ffor which pleynli this noble translatour 

Cast off purpos / thes stories for to 
write 100 

And for to doon / his diligent labour 

As thei fill / in ordre to endite 

That men aftir / myht hem silff delite 

Auentures so as thei fill in dede 


‘Off sondri pryncis / to beholde & 


reede 105 


16 
And haue a maner contemplacion 
That thynges alle / where fortune may 
atteyne 


‘Be transitori off condicion 
-ffor she off kynde / is hasti & sodeyne 


Contrarious hir cours for to re- 
st(r)eyne IIo 


‘Off wilfulnesse she is so variable 
' When men most trust / than is she most 


chaungeable 


17 


And for hir chaunge / & for hir doubil- 
nesse 
This bochas but that men sholde encline 


‘Sette ther hertis / void off vnstabil- 


nesse 115 
Upon thynges which that ben deuyne 
Wher as joie perpetueli doth shyne 
Withoute eclipsyng in that heuenli see 
Void off alle cloudis of mutabilite 


18 


Among this bochas / writith off swet- 
nesse 120 

And off maters / that lusti ben & glade 

And sumwhile he writt / off wrechid- 
nesse 

And how fortune / kan floure & after 
fade 

Joie vnder cloude / prosperite in the 
shade 

Enterchaungyng / off euery manere 
thyng 125 

Which that men feele / here in this 
world lyuyng 


19 
And in his processe / who so list be- 
holde 
Off alle estatis of hih and louh degre 
And off pryncis / bothe 3ong and old 


114. but. So MS. Read bit, i.e. biddeth. 


PALL ‘OF PRINCES: A 159 


ffro the begynnyng / which in this world 
ha be 130 

Lyuynge in joie / or in aduersite 

ffro the first / he descendith doun 

Of ther fortune / bi pleyne descripciovn 


20 
“Off the most noble he spareth noon 
But settith hem in ordre ceriousli 135 
‘Gynnyth at adam / & endith at kyng 
John 
‘Ther auentures / rehersyng bi and bi 
Off this kyng iohn / concludyng finali 
How that he was for (al) his gret puis- 
saunce 
‘Off prince edward take prisoner in 
ffraunce 140 


21 

This seid bochas auctour of this book 
Which off stories had gret inteligence 
Summe he leffte summe also he took 
Such as he leffte was off no necligence 
Supposyng & demynge off credence 145 
Alle the stories which that comoun be 
Other knew hem also wel as he 


Ze 
And that folk wold haue had disdeyn 
Thynges comoun / to put in memoire 
‘Therfore bochas / thouhte it was but 
veyne 150 
To his name / noon encres off gloire 
‘To remembre no cronycle nor histoire 
But tho that wern / for ther merit not- 
able 
Auctorised famous and comendable 


23 
In his labour / hauyng a delite 155 
That the mater gretly myhte auayle 
Do plesaunce to the comon profit 
Off noble stories / to make rehersaile 
“Shewynge a merour / how all the world 
shal faile 
And how fortune / for al ther hih re- 
novn 160 
Hath upon princis iurediccion 


24 
The which thyng / in ful sobre wise 
He considred / in his inwarde entente 
In his resun gan to aduertise 
134. Bodley 263 ...he ne spareth... 
139. Our MS reads as; bracketed word from MS 


Bodley. See 160, 181. 
148. Bodley 263 reads And lest that folk, etc. 


Seyng off princis / the blynd entende- 
ment 105 

With worldi worshep how that thei be 
blent 

As thei sholde euer / her estatis keepe 

And as fortune were J . leid to sleepe 


25 
As thei hade of fortune the maistrie 
Her enchanted / with ther pociouns 170 
Bi sum crafte / off newe sorcerie 
Or bi power off incantaciouns 
To make stable / ther domynaciouns 
With iren cheynys / for to laste longe 
Lokkid to rokkis off adimantis stronge 


26 
Supposyng in ther surquedie 176 
Ther estatis / sholde be durable 


‘But fortune kan frowardli denye 
-Pleynli proue / that thei be chaungable 


And to pryncis / for thei be nat 
stable 180 
ffortune ful oft / for al ther gret estat 
Unwarli chaungeth / & seith to hem 
chekmat 
27 


ffor lordis summe / in ther magnificence 
Off roiall power / sette of god riht nouht 
Thei nat consider / his longe pa- 
cience 185 
Nor auertise / his power in ther thouht 
But in ther hertis / 3iff it were wel 
souht 
How he is meke / & pacient to abide 
Thei wolde of reson / ther pompe leyn a 
side 
28 


But for ther taryeng / & ther necly- 
gence 190 

That thei to hym wil nat resorte a geyn 

3it of his mercy / & benyuolence 

With oute vengaunce / rigour or dis- 
deyn 


‘As a meke fader / in alle his werkis 


pleyn 
Assaieth his 3erde of castigacion 195 
So for to bringe hem / to correccion 


29 


-Summe he kan ful fadyrly chastise 


Where he loueth by punshyng of siknesse 
And of his mercy in many a nothir wise 


-Bi aduersite of sum worldli distresse 200 


And he nat asketh / for (his) kyndenesse 
201. Bracketed word from MS Bodley 263. 


160 JOHN LYDGATE 


Off hih nor low / who so kan aduerte 
Noon othir tresor / but a mannys herte 


30 
And as myn auctour / list to compre- 
hende 
This john bochas / bi gret auctorite 205 
It is almesse to correcten and amende 
The vicious folk / off euery comounte 
And bi exaumplis / which that notable be 
Off pryncis olde / that whilom dede fall 
The lowere poeple / from ther erroure 


call 210 
31 
Bi smale whelpis / as summe clerkys 
write 


Chastised is the myhti fers leon 

And whan the swerd off vengeaunce eek 
doth bite 

Upon pryncis / for ther transgression 

The comon poepil / in ther opynyoun 215 

‘ffor werrai dreed tremble doun and quake 

‘And bi such mene / ther vices thei for- 
sake 


32 

And such also / as ha be defoulid 

In ther vices / bi long contynuance 

Or in ther synnys rustid & jmowled 220 

Bi good exaumple may come to repent- 
aunce 

Who hym repentith the lord will hym 
auaunce 

And hym accepte in hih and louh estate 

The meek preserue punyssch the obsty- 
nat 


33 

This said mater / touchyng such 
thynges 225 

Myn auctour bochas / heeraffter shal de- 
clare 

Be exeaumple of princis / & of myhti 
kynges 

What was ther fyne / & nat the trouth 
spare 


And theih my stile nakid be & bare 
In rethorik myn auctour for to sue 230 
Sit fro the trouthe / shal I nat remue 


34 
But on the substaunce / bi good leiser 
abyd 
Affter myn auctour / lik as I may at- 
teyne 


206. It is. Read did his, with MS Bodley 263. 


And for my part / sette eloquence aside 

And in this book / biwepen & com- 
pleyne 235 

Thassaut off fortune froward & sodeyne 

How sche on pryncis / hath kid here 
variaunce 

And of her malice the dedli mortal 
chaunce 

35 

But o allas / who schal be my mvse 

Or vnto whom shal j for helpe calle 240 

Calliope my callyng will refuse 

And on pernaso / here worthi sustren 
alle 

Thei will there sugre tempre with no 
galle 

ffor ther suetnesse / and lusti fressh 
syngyng 

fful ferre discordith / fro materis com- 


pley (ny) ng 245 
36 
Mi maistir chauncer / with his freissh 
comedies 


‘Is deed alas / cheeffe poete of briteyne 
-That whilom made / ful pitous trage- 


dies 

The falle of pryncis / he dede also com- 
pleyne 

As he that was / of makyng souer- 


eyne 250 
Whom al this land / shold of riht 
preferre 
Sith of oure language / he was the lode- 
sterre 
37 


Senek in Rome / thoruh his hih prudence 

Wrot tragedies of gret moralite 

And tullius / cheeff welle of elo- 
quence 255 

Maade in his tyme / many fressh dite 

Franceis petrak / of florence the cite 

Maade a book / as I can reherce 

Of too fortunys / welful & peruerse 


38 


‘And ageyn bothe / wrot the remedies 260 


In bookis tweyne / made a deuysion 

Amonge rehersyng many freissh stories 

The first book / is thus conueied doun 

A dialoge twen gladnesse & resoun 

The secunde / can bere me weel wit- 
nesse 265 

Maad atwen resoun / & worldli heuy- 
nesse 


245. Bracketed letters from MS Bodley 263. 


FALL OF PRINCES: A 161 


39 

The matir / is wondirful delectable 

Thouh wo with joie / haue int(e)resse 

And john bochas / wrot mateers lament- 
able 

The fall off pryncis / where he doth ex- 
presse 270 

How fro ther joie / thei fill in gret dis- 
tresse 

And alle thes writers / thoruh ther fam- 
ous renoun 

Gret worshipe dede vnto ther nacion 


40 

And semblabli as I ha told toforn 

‘Mi maistir chauncer / dede his besy- 
nesse 275 

And in his daies / hath so wel hym born 

Out off oure tunge / tawoiden al reud- 
nesse 

And to refourme it / with colours of 
suetnes 

Wherfore lat vs yiue hym laude & glory 

And put his name / with poetis in mem- 
ory 280 


41 

Off whos labour / to make mencion 

Wherthoruh of riht / he sholde com- 
mendid be 

-In 30uthe he made a translacion 

-Off a book which is callid trophe 

‘In lumbard tunge / as men may reede 
& see 285 

And in oure vulgar / longe or than he 
deide 

» Gaff it the name / of troilus & cresseide 


42 
Which for to reede / louers hem delite 
Thei ha therin / so gret deuocion 
And this poete / hymsilff also to 
quyte ZOD. 
* Off boeces book / the consolacion 
Maad in his tyme / (an) hool transla- 
cion 
‘And to his sone / that callid was lowis 
He made a tretys / ful noble & of gret 
prisse 
43 
-Upon thastlabre / in ful notable 
fourme 295 
Sett hem in ordre / with ther dyuysions 
Mennys wittis / tapplien and confourme 


268. Bodley 263 reads have an interesse. 


To vndirstonde / bi ful experte resons 

Bi domefieng of sundri mansions 

The roote oute souht / at the ascen- 
dent 300 

Toforn or he gaff / any iugement 


44 
He wrot also / ful many day agone 
Dante in inglissh / hym silff so doth ex- 
presse 
The pitous story / of ciex and alcione 
And the deth eek / of blaunche the 
duchesse 305 
And notabli / dede his besynesse 
Bi gret auys / his wittis to dispose 
To translate / the romaunce of the rose 


45 
Thus in vertu / he sette all his entent 
Ydilnesse and vices for to flee 310 


Off foulis also / he wrot the parlament 
Theryn remembryng / of roial eglis thre 
How in ther chois / thei felte aduersite 
Tofore nature / profred the batayle 

Ech for his parti / 3if it wolde availe 375 


46 

He dede also his diligence and peyne 
In oure vulgar / to translate & endite 
Origen vpon the maudeleyn 

And of the leoun / a book he dede write 
Off anneleida / & off falls arcite 320 
He made a compleynt / doolful & pitous 
And of the broche / which that Vulcanus 


47 
At thebes wrouhte / ful dyuerse of na- 
ture 
Ouyde writeth / who ther off hade a siht 
ffor hih desir / he shold not endure 325 
But he hit hadde / neuer be glad nor liht 
And 3if he hadde it / onys in his myht 
Lich as my maistir / seith & wrott in 
dede 
It to conserue / he sholde ay liue in 


dreede 
48 
This poete wrot at requeste of the 
quene 330 


‘A legende / of parfyt hoolines 


Off good wommen / to fynde out nyn- 
teen 

That dede excelle in bounte & fairnesse 

And for his laboure / and bisines 


162 JOHN LYDGATE 


Was inportable / his wittis to en- 


combre 335 
In al this world / to fynde so gret a 
nombre 
49 


He made the book off cantirbury talis 

Whan the pilgrimes rood on pilgrymage 

Thoruhout Kent by hillis & bi valis 

And alle the stories / told in ther pas- 
sage 340 

Enditid hem ful wel in oure language 

Summe of knyhthod & summe off gentil- 
esse 

And summe off loue & summe of parfit- 
nesse 


50 
And summe also / off gret moralite 
Summe of disport encludyng gret sent- 
ence 345 
In prose he wrot / the tale off Melibe 
And off his wiff / that callid was pru- 
dence 
And off Grisildis parfit pacience 
*And how the monk / of stories newe & 
olde 
Pitous tragedies / bi the weie tolde 350 


5 
This said poete / my maister in his daies 
Maad & compiled ful many a fressh dite 
Compleyntis / baladis / roundelis / vir- 
relaies 
fful delectable / to heeryn and to see 
ffor which men sholde off riht & 
equyte 355 
Sith he of inglissh / in makyng was the 
beste 
Praie vnto god / to 3iue his soule reste 


52 

And thes poetis / J make off mencioun 
Were bi old tyme / had in gret deynte 
With kynges pryncis / in euery re- 

gioun 360 
Gretli preferred / after ther degre 
‘ffor lordis hadde / plesance for to see 
To studie among / & to caste ther lookis 
‘At good leiser / vpon wise bookis 


53 
ffor in the tyme / off cesar Julius 365 
Whan the triumphe / he wan in rome 
toune 
He entre wolde / the scoole off tullius 
And here his lecture / off gret affeccioun 


And not withstondyng / his conquest & 


renoun 
Vn to bookis / he gaff gret atten- 
daunce 370 


And hadde in stories / yoie and gret 
plesaunce 


54 


‘Eek in this lond / I dar afferme a thyng 
“Ther is a prince / fful myhty of puys- 


saunce 


‘A kynges sone / vncle to the kynge 


Henry the sexte / which is now in 
fraunce 375 


-And is lieftenant / & hath the gouern- 


aunce 
Off our breteyne thoruh whos discrecion 
He hath conserued / in this regioun 


55 


’ Duryng his tyme off ful hih prudence 
“Pes and quiete / and sustened riht 380 


Sit natwithstandyng / his noble prouy- 
dence 
He is in deede / prouyd a good knyht 


~Eied as argus / with reson and forsiht 


Off hih lectrure / I dar eek off hym 
telle 384 
And treuli deeme / that he doth excelle 


56 « 


In vndirstondyng / all othir of his age 
‘And hath gret joie / with clerkis to 


commune 
And no man is / mor expert off language 
Stable in studie alwei he doth contune 
Settyng a side / alle chaunges of fortune 
And wher he loueth / 3iff I schal nat 
tarie 39I 
Withoute cause / ful loth he is to varie 


57 


‘Duc off Gloucestre / men this prince 


calle 
And natwithstandyng / his staat & dig- 
nyte 


‘His corage neuer / doth appalle 395 
.To studie in bookis / off antiquite 


Therin he hath so gret felicite 
Vertuousli / hym silff to ocupie 
Off vicious slouth / to haue the maistrie 


58 
And with his prudence & wit(h) his 
manheed 400 


FALL, OF PRINCES: A 163 


Trouthe to susteyne / he fauour set aside 
And hooli chirche meyntenyng in dede 
» That in this land / no lollard dar abide 
As verrai support / vpholdere & eek 


guyde 
‘Spareth non / but maketh hym silff 
strong 405 
‘To punysshe alle tho / that do the chirch 
wrong 


59 

Thus is he both manly & eek wise 
Chose of god to be his owne knyht 
And off o thynge he hath a synglar price 
That heretik dar non comen in his siht 
In cristes feith / he stant so hool vpriht 
Off hooli chirche / defence and cham- 

pion 412 
To chastise alle / that do therto treson 


60 

And to do plesance to our lord Ihesu 
He studieth euere / to haue intelligence 
Reedinge off bookis / bring(e)th in 

vertu 416 
Vices excludyng / slouthe & necligence 
Maketh a prince / to haue experience 
To knowe hym silff / in many sundry 


wise 
Wher he trespaseth his errour to chastise 
61 
‘And among bookis / pleynli this is the 
cas 421 


-This said prynce / considred of resoun 
‘The noble book off this John bochas 
Was accordyng in his opynyoun 
* Off gret nobles & reputacioun 425 
‘And vnto pryncis gretli necessarie 
' To 3iue exaumple / how this world doth 
varie 
62 
And for this cause as in his entent 
To shewe thuntrust / of al worldli thyng 
’ He gaffe to me / in comaundement 430 
As hym sempte / it was riht wel sityng 
*That I sholde / after my cunynge 
“This book translate / hym to do ples- 
aunce 
To shewe the chaunge / of worldli vari- 
aunce 


63 


-And with support of his magnificence 435 
’Vnder the weengis of his correccion 


Thouh that I haue / lak of eloquence 
I schal procede / in this translacioun 
ffro me avoidyng / all presumpcioun 


‘Lowli submyttyng / eueri hour & space 
‘Mi rude language / to my lordis grace 


64 
And as I haue o thyng wel in mynde 
He bad me I scholde / in aspeciall 


‘ffolowyng myn auctour / write as I fynde 


And for no fauoure / be nat parciall 445 
Thus I mene to speke in generall 
And noon estat / sengulerli depraue 


‘But the sentence / of myn auctour saue 


65 
Al this conseyued I gan my stile dresse 
Thouht I wolde / in my mater pro- 
ceede 450 
And for the mater abraide on heuynesse 
Off freissh colours I took no manere 
heede 
But my processe / pleynly for to leede 
As me sempte it was to me most mette 
To sett a parte alle rethoriques sueete 455 


66 

Dites of murnyng & of compleynynge 
Nat appertene vnto Calliope 
Nor to the muses that on pernaso synge 
Which be remembrid in noumbre thries 

thre 
And vnto maters off aduersite 460 
With ther sugred aureat licour 
Thei be nat willi for to don fauour 


67 
But off disdeyne / me settyng ferre abak 
To hynder me off that I wolde endite 
Hauyng no colours / but onli white & 
blak 465 


‘To the tragedies / which that I shal 


write 
And for I can my sylff no bet acquyte 
Vndir support / of alle that shal it reede 
Upon bochas / riht thus I will proceede 


164 JOHN LYDGATE 


B 


THE LETTER OF CANACE TO MACAREUS 
Fall of Princes i: 6882-7049 


At the end of the first book of the De Casibus, after the tragedy of Samson 
and a chapter “In Mulieres” apparently suggested by the perfidy of Delilah, Boc- 
caccio inserts one of his group-chapters, entitled ““Miseri Quidam”. In it he says 
that he had not yet written sufficient of the wickedness of women when he heard 
a clamour of lamentation headed by Pyrrhus, him who was slain by Orestes in the 
temple of Apollo with the fraudulent connivance of the priest Macareus. Boc- 
caccio gives no further detail regarding Macareus ; he says “‘sic et plurimi succede- 
bant”, and concludes Book I. 

Apparently Laurent, the French translator of Boccaccio, seeing the word 

’ Macareus, thought of the story of Canace and her brother Macareus, to which he 
had already alluded in his twelfth chapter without any suggestion from Boccaccio. 
He therefore added at this point a dozen lines telling briefly the tragedy of the 
wretched children of Aeolus, in which he says that historians are silent as to 
Canace’s fate, although Macareus escaped and became priest of Apollo at Del- 
phos. Lydgate, in his turn, saw the allusion to Canace; but instead of adhering 
to the short inconclusive tale told by Laurent, he launched into a full portrayal 
of Canace’s anguish and death, giving at length her farewell letter to Macareus. 

His distribution of emphasis among the various parts of the story is quite 
different from that of Ovid or of Gower. Ovid dwells upon the physical details, 
and makes one or two tasteless word-plays; Canace says, according to him, that 
her father Aeolus has the savage temper of the winds which are his subjects, that 
she herself in the pangs of childbirth was a “soldier new” to such service, and that 
she will not long be called “or mother or bereaved”. In the Latin the narrative 
of preceding events and the lyric lament are both incorporated in the letter. Gower 
separates these elements in his treatment of the story, Confessio Amantis iii:143 
ff. He disposes of all in less than 200 lines, eliminating most of Ovid’s physical 
detail, and compressing the letter into 28 lines, as follows:—(MS Bodl. Fairfax 3) 


O pou my sorwe and my gladnesse Let him be beried in my graue 

O bou myn hele and my siknesse 280 Beside me so schalt Pou haue 

O my wanhope and al my trust Vpon ous bobe remembrance 

O my desese and al my lust ffor bus it stant of my greuance 

O bou my wele o bou my wo Now at pis time as bou schalt wite 
O pou my frend o bou my fo Wibp teres and wib enke write 

O pou my loue o bou myn hate This lettre I haue in cares colde 

ffor bee mot I be ded algate In my riht hond my Penne I holde 300 
Thilke ende may I noght asterte And in my left be swerd I kepe 

And 3it wip al myn hole herte And in my barm per lip to wepe 
Whil pat me lasteb eny brep Thi child and myn which sobbep faste 
I wol be loue into my dep 290 Now am I come vnto my laste 

Bot of o ping I schal pee preie ffare wel for I schal sone deie 

If bat my litel Sone deie And penk how I pi loue abeie 


The word-plays of Ovid are not here, but there is an attempt at “rhetorical 
color” in the use of lines beginning alike and in the balancing of “opposites”. Lit- 
tle material is actually retained from the Latin, and that little does not come from 


FALL OF PRINCES: B 165 


the last part of the Epistle, the lines 111-120 which Ovid’s editor Palmer calls 
“the greatest achievement of the Heroides’. What Gower transfers is Canace’s 
request that she and her child be buried in one grave, and the picture of her with 
which the Epistle opens, a pen in her right hand, the sword in her left. To this 
Gower adds the child in its mother’s lap, falling from it as she stabs herself, and 
rolling in the blood; but according to Ovid the infant had already been carried 
away, to be abandoned in some solitary place. 

The Ovidian portrait of Canace, with pen and sword, was retained by Petrarch 
in his Trionfo d’Amore, IIa, 181-3; he there says, without using Canace’s name :— 


E quella che la penna da man destra, 
Come dogliosa e disperata scriva, 
E ’1 ferro ignudo tien dalla sinestra. 


Lydgate also is struck by the picture of Canace, which he presents in Gower’s, 
not in Ovid’s form, with the child in her lap. He dissolves Gower’s balanced “op- 
posites”, lines 279 ff., into his lines 4-18, and makes in 33-35 Canace’s request for 
the burial of her child with her, found in both Ovid and Gower. He greatly 
expands the mother’s wail of anguished tenderness over her child, evincing a 
feeling deeper than Ovid’s and much deeper than that of Gower. The twenty- 
three stanzas of this letter do not, however, get their length from the added 
pathos ; there is a deviation into ill-placed classicism in lines 99-126, and there is 
recurring blame of King Aeolus. Gower, indeed, uses the whole story as an 
example not so much of criminal love as of “malencolie’” or unbridled anger; in 
the Confessio it is the king-father who is the awful example rather than the un- 
happy victims of the God of Love. Gower speaks, in line 172, of “lawe positif”, 
the lex positiva of the Church, which had made incestuous unions wrong. He 
discusses the subject fully at the opening of Book viii of the Confessio, where he 
points out that in the early world marriages between brother and sister were usual, 
but that the Pope (line 144) had imposed restrictions. His tone on the matter is 
so calmly legal that there may be some relation between it and the condemnation 
which Chaucer strongly expresses in the Man of Law’s headlink, choosing this 
very story for especial censure and declaring it unfit material for narrative. Alanus 
de Insulis, in his Anticlaudianus I, 5:11-12, had already said, in general, that 
“Nec nitor argenti nec fulgure gratius aurum Excusare potest picturae crimen 
adultum.” Although Ovid had protested his horror, he had recounted at length 
the stories of Byblis and of Myrrha; and the Christian Boccaccio, in his Amorosa 
Visione xxv, gives fully the prayer of Byblis to her brother, in which she rejects 
“Gl superflue nomen di fratello” ; just preceding, there is brief mention of “Canace 
e Macareo dolenti”. Later writers, in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England, 
include Byblis, Canace, Pasiphae, among the great tragic lovers of the world. 
So in Feylde’s Controversy between a Lover and a Jay; but as he there applies 
the epithet “so hynde” to Queen Tomyris, we may regard him with a little 
suspicion. And Skelton, making extraordinary comparisons between the Countess 
cf Surrey’s gentlewomen and some classical heroines,—see Garland of Laurel 
910 and note,— is doubtfully sincere. 

Lydgate does not seem to have given the matter much moral consideration ; 
his remarks on incest, in the next book of the Fall of Princes (4068-71), are 
very brief. He either forgot or disregarded Chaucer’s censure of the Canace story 
as unfit for narrative; and once launched on it, he let his sympathy run away with 


166 JOHN LYDGATE 


him. That sympathy is not all, however, for the unhappy lovers, it is for the 
child, a feeling so strong, in this cloistered and pedantic monk, that it occasionally 
breaks the crust of the inhibiting formula and leaps out in a flash of sincerity. 
All who have read the Fall of Princes have caught and welcomed this gleam; the 
passage was selected by Gray, and by Campbell for his 1819 Specimens of the 
British Poets; and part of it was included by Gilfillan (1860) in his Specimens 
of the Less-Known British Poets, i: 46-48. The letter is too long, just as the dying 
speech of Polyxena, Troy Book iv:6731 ff., is too long; but both passages have 


points of reality. 


It should be noted that Lydgate scans Canace as of three syllables; Gower 


treated it as a dissyllable. 


[MS Brit. Mus. Harley 1766] 


Out of hire swowh whan she did abrayde 

Knowyng no meene but deth in hire 
dystresse (6883 ) 

-To hire brothir / ful pitously she sayde 

Cause of my sorwe / roote of myn hevy- 
nesse 

That whylom were / cheeff sours of my 
gladnesse 5 

Whan bothe our Ioyes / be wel so dys- 
posyd 

Vndir o keye / our hertys to be enclosyd 


2 
Whylom thou were / suppoort and syker- 
nesse 
Cheeff reioysshing of my _ worldly 
plesaunce (6890) 
But now thow art / the ground of my 
syknesse Io 


Welle of wanhope of my dedly penaunce 

Which haue of sorwe / grettest habun- 
daunce 

That euere yit hadde / ony creature 

Which mvt for love / the deth allas 
endure 


Thow were whylom / my blysse and al 
my trust I5 

Sovereyn counfort / my sorwes to apese 

-Spryng and welle / of al myn hertys lust 

And now allas / cheef roote of my 
dysese 

But yiff my deth / myght do the ony 


ese (6900) 
O brothir myn / in remembraunce of 
tweyne 20 


Deth shal to me / be plesaunce and no 
peyne 


4 


’ My cruel ffadir / moost vnmercyable 


Ordeyned hath / it nedys mvt be so 


' In his rygour he is so vntretable 
' Al mercylees / he wyl that it be doo 25 


That we algate / shal deye bothe twoo 

But I am glad / sith it may be noon 
othir 

Thow art escapyd / m(y) best belouyd 
brothir 


5 
This is myn ende I may it nat 
asterte (6910) 
O brothir myn / ther is no more to 
seye 30 


Lowly besechyng with al myn hool herte 
ffor to remembre / specially I preye 


“Yiff it be falle / my litel sone deye 
‘That thow mayst afftir / som mynde 


vpon vs have 


‘Suffre vs bothe / to be buryed in o 


grave 2 35 


‘I holde hym streyghtly atwen myn armys 


tweyne 
Thow and nature / leyd on me this 
charge 
He gyltles / with me mvt suffre peyne 
And sith thow art at ffredom and at 


large (6920) 
Lat kyndenesse / our love not so dys- 
charge 40 


But haue a mynde / wher euere that 
thow be 
Oonys a day / vpon my chyld and me 


7 
On the and me dependith the trespace 
Towchyng our gylt / and our greet 
offence 


FALL OF PRINCES: B 167 


*But weylleway / moost aungelyk of 
fface 45 

-Our yonge chyld / in his pure inno- 
cence 

Shal ageyn ryght / suffre dethys violence 

~Tendre of lymes / god wot ful gyltles 

The goodly ffayre / which lith here 


spechelees (6930) 

8 
“A mouth he hath / but wordys hath he 
noone 50 


-Can nat compleyne / allas for noon out- 
rage 

Nor gruccheth nat / but lyth here al 
aloone 

Stylle as a lamb / moost meke of his 
visage 

What Fore of steel / cowde doon to 


hym damage 
Or suffre hym deye / beholdyng the 
manere 55 


And look benygne / of his tweyne eyen 
clere 


-O thow my ffadir / to cruel is the wreche 
Hardere of herte / than tygre or lyon 
‘To slen a chyld / that lyth withoute 
speche (6940) 
Voyd of al mercy / and remyssyon 60 
And on his modir / hast no compassyon 
His youthe considred / with lyppes soffte 
as sylk 
‘Which at my breest / lyth stylle and 
soukith mylk 
10 


Is ony sorw remembryd be wrytyng 

Vn to my sorweful / syhes comparable 65 

Or was ther euere / creature levyng 

That felt of dool / a thyng more lament- 
able 

ffor counfortlees / and vnrecuperable 

Ar thylke heepyd sorwes ful of 


rage (6950) 

Which han with woo / oppressyd my 

corage 70 
11 


Rekne al meschevys / in especial 

And on my myscheef / remembre and 
ha good mynde 

My lord my ffadir / is myn enmy mortal 

Experience Inough / thereof I ffynde 

ffor in his pursewt / he hath lefit be 
hynde 75 


57. the wreche. Read thi wreche, as in Bergen’s 
edition. 


In destruccyon of the my Chyld / and 


me 
Routhe and al mercy / and ffadirly pite 


12 
And the my brothir avoyded from his 


syght 
Which in no wyse / his grace mayst 


attayne (6960) 
Allas that rygour / vengaunce and cruel 
ryght 80 


Shulde above mercy / be lady souereyne 

But cruelte doth at me so dysdeyne 

That though my brothir / my chyld / 
and also I 

Shal deye exylled / allas from al mercy 


13 


‘My ffadir whylom / by many sundry 
85 


signe 


‘Was my socour / my supportacion 


To the and me / moost gracious and 


benygne 
Our worldly gladnesse / our consolacyon 


‘But love and fortune / ha turnyd vp so 


don (6970) 
Our grace allas / our welffare and our 
ffame 90 
Hard / to recure / so sclaundryd is our 
name 


14 


‘Spot of dyffamyng / is hard to wasshe 


away 

Whan noyse and rumour / abrood do 
ffolk manace 

To hyndre a man / ther may be no delay 

ffor hatful ffame / fleth fferre in ful 
short space 95 


‘But of vs tweyne / ther is noon othir 


grace 
Save oonly deth / and afftir deth allas 
Eternal sclaundre / of vs thus stant the 
caas 


15 
Whom shal we blame / or whom shal 
we atwyte (6980) 
Our grete offence / sith we may it nat 
hyde 100 
ffor oure exskus reportys to respyte 


» Meene is ther noon / except the god 


Cupyde 
And though that he / wolde for vs pro- 
vyde 


83. though. So MS. Read thou, as in Bergen’s 
edition. 


168 


In this matere / to been our cheef 
reffuge 
Poetys seyn / he is blynd to been a 
Juge 105 
16 


He is depeynt / lych a blynd archere 

To marke aryght / fayllyng dyscrecyon 

Holdyng no mesour / nouthir ferre nor 
neer 

But lyk ffortunys / dysposicion (6990) 

Al vpon hap / voyde of al reson II0 

As a blynd Archeer / with arwes sharpe 
grounde 

Off aventure / yiveth many a mortal 
wounde 

17 

‘At the and me / he wrongly did marke 

' ffelly to hyndre / our ffatal aventures 

As ferre as Phebus / shyneth in his 
arke 115 

To make vs reffuce / to alle creatures 

Callyd / vs tweyne / vn to the wooful 
lures 

Off dyffame / which wyl departe neuere 

Be new repoort / the noyse encresyng 
euere id (7000) 


Odyous ffame / with swyfft wynges 
flleth 120 

But al good ffame / envye doth re- 
streyne 

Ech man of othir / the dyffautys seth 

Yit on his owne / no man wyl com- 


pleyne 

But al the world / out cryeth on vs 
tweyne 

Whoos hatful yre / by vs may not be 
quemyd 125 


ffor I mvt deye / my ffadir hath so 
demyd 
19 
Now farewel brothir / to me it doth 
suffyse 
To deye allone / for our bothes sake 
And in my moost / feythful humble 


wyse (7010) 
Vn to my deth ward / though I tremble 
and quake 130 


‘Off the for euere / now my leve I take 

And oonys a yeer / forget nat but take 
hede 

: My ffatal day / this lettre for to rede 


20 
‘ So shalt thow han / on me som remem- 
braunce 


JOHN LYDGATE 


My name enprentyd / in thy calen- 
deer 135 

Be rehersaylle / of my dedly grevaunce 

Were blak that day / and make a dool- 
ful cheer 


~And whan thow comyst / and shalt 


- 


aproche neer 


‘My sepulture / I pray the nat dys- 


deyne (7020) 
Vpon my grave / som teerys for to 
reyne 140 
21 
Wrytyng hire lettre / awhappyd and in 
drede 


‘In hire ryght hand / hire penne gan to 


quake 
And a sharp swerd / to make hire herte 
blede 


-In hire lefft hand / hir ffadir hath hire 


take 
And moost hire sorwe / was for hire 
chyldes sake 145 
Vpon whoos fface / in hire barm slep- 
yng 
fful many a teer / she wepte in compleyn- 
yng 
22 
Afftir al this / so as she stood and 
quook 
Hire chyld beholdyng / myd of hire 
peynes smerte (7030) 
Withoute abood / the sharpe swerd she 
took 150 
And rooff hire sylff / evene to the herte 


‘Hire chyld / ffyl don / which myght 


nat asterte 


‘Havyng noon helpe / to socoure hym nor 


Save 


‘But in hire blood the sylff / be gan to 


bathe 


23 
And thanne hire ffadir / moost cruel of 
entent 155 


‘Bad that the chyld / shulde anoon be 


take 


- Off cruel houndys / in haste for to be 


rent 


- And be devouryd / for his moder sake 
' Off this tragedye / thus an ende I 


make (7040) 
Processe of which / as men may rede 
and se 160 


Concludeth on myscheef / and ffuryous 
cruelte 


FALL OF PRINCES: C 169 


C 
ROME, REMEMBER 
Fall of Princes, ii: 4460 ff. 
In this envoy, which closes the second book of the Fall of Princes, Lydgate 


_carries his usual procedure a step further. His envoys, added at Gloucester’s 


bidding as he says ii:145, have of course no parallel in the prose of Laurent, and 
are regularly constructed on three rimes for the whole, with a refrain-phrase 
or line; they are for the most part of three to five stanzas. Chaucer, in the envoy 


.to the Clerk’s Tale, had also used three rimes, but he there composed no more 


than thirty-six lines; Lydgate, like many another insensitive imitator, seems to 
have felt that emphasis and amplification of a device increase its effectiveness, 
and he here extends his scheme through 126 lines, on the three rimes -oun, -ing, 
and -ime. Similarly, in his poem with the refrain “So as the crabbe goth forward”, 
copied by Shirley in the MS R 3, 20 of Trinity College Cambridge, there are 
fifty-six lines on three rimes, while the original French, also transcribed by Shirley 
with a request to readers to make comparison, is of twenty-five lines. Compare 
Lydgate’s poem to St. Denis, printed by MacCracken 1:127-9, and running through 
nine octave stanzas on three rimes, with refrain; cf. also his Fall of Princes ix: 
2371 ff., and the poem Horns Away, p. 110 ante. 

There i is in the Fall of Princes, book viii, lines 2528 ff., another lament over 
Rome’s wretchedness and vices, but this is far more interesting because of its use 
of the “Ubi Sunt” motive, a theme so popular in the Middle Ages that examples 


- of it might be multiplied indefinitely. Its most famous expression is in Villon’s 


Ballade des dames du temps jadis, with the refrain “Mais ot sont les neiges 
d’antan?” which Rossetti rendered “But where are the snows of yesteryear?” 
Villon, however, had many predecessors. The direct line of connection, in which 
the “Ubi Sunt” motive is combined with a list of personages, runs back of Villon 


-and Regnier to the Latin hymns of the eleventh-thirteenth centuries ; one of these, 


ascribed to Jacopone da Todi, begins: 


Dic, ubi Salomon, olim tam nobilis, 

Vel ubi Sampson est, dux invincibilis ? 
Vel pulcher Absalon, vultu mirabilis, 
Vel dulcis Jonathas, multum amabilis? 
Quo Caesar abiit, celsus imperio? 

Vel Xerxes splendidus, totus in prandio? 
Dic ubi Tullius, clarus eloquio? 

Vel Aristoteles, summus ingenio? 


Another hymn, Audi tellus, contains the passage: 


Transierunt rerum materies, 
Ut a sole liquescit glacies. 
Ubi Plato, ubi Porphyrius, 
Ubi Tullius aut Virgilius; 
Ubi Thales, ubi Empedocles, 
Aut egregius Aristoteles; 
Alexander ubi rex maximus; 


170 JOHN LYDGATE 


Ubi Hector Troiae fortissimus; 
Ubi David rex doctissimus; 

Ubi Salamon prudentissimus ; 

Ubi Helena Parisque roseus— 
Ceciderunt in profundum ut lapides; 
Quis scit, an detur requies? 


The English Franciscan, Thomas de Sales, in his Luve Ron, of the thirteenth 
century, has: 

Hwer is Paris and heleyne 

Pat weren so bryht and feyre on bleo 

Amadas tristram and dideyne 

Yseude and alle beo 

Ector wip his scharpe meyne 

And cesar riche of wordes feo 

Heo beop iglyden ut of be reyne 

So be scheft is of pe cleo. 


Boccaccio’s third Canzone, see ed. Moutier xvi:115 ff., is a lament over Rome 
and her fallen great ; it contains a long passage beginning : 


Ove li duo gentil Scipioni, 
Ov’ é il tuo grande Cesare possente ? 
Ove Bruto valente? 


One of the chants-royaux of Deschamps (see his works iii:182), of fifty-six 
lines with the refrain “Tuit y mourront, et li fol et li saige,” has in its third stanza: 


Ou est Artus, Godefroy de Buillon, 

Judith, Hester, Penelope, Arrien 
Semiramis, le poissant roy Charlon, 
George, Denys, Christofle, Julien, 

Pierres et Pols, maint autre cretien, 

Et les martires? La mort a tous s’applique. 


A long passage of Olivier de la Marche’s Triumphe des Dames, stanzas 165-178 
of the ed. by Kalbfleisch, 1901, opens each stanza with the words “Qui est 
devenu—” and bewails the power of Death on a long catalogue of noble dames. 
The monk Ryman, a contemporary of Lydgate (see Zupitza in Archiv 89:167 f£., 
esp. 256) wrote: 


Where is become king Salamon 
And Sampson of myght strong 

King Charles also and king Arthure 
With alle the worthies nyne 

Diues also with his richesse 
Contynued not longe 


Jehan Regnier’s Balade Morale que le Prisonnier fit (see ed. Lacroix 1867), has 
a stanza beginning : 


Ou est Artus, ou est Hector de Troye? 


PALUOP PRINCES: C 171 


In the anonymous poem of MS Brit. Mus. Adds. 37049, cited p. 126 here as al- 
luding to the Dance Macabre, there is a passage of the same nature as Ryman’s, 
beginning “Wher is now Salamon with all his prudence” etc. Nevill in his Castell 
of Pleasure has the “Ubi Sunt” motive with list, see p. 293 here. The Lament 
for Edward IV, ascribed to Skelton, has an allusion to the motive, see Dyce i:4. 
Barclay in his Ship of Fools uses it; see Jamieson’s ed. 1:268-70. Sir Thomas 
More, in his Book of Fortune (see Anglia 26:142) introduces Fortune as saying: 


Ou est Dauid et Salamon 

Mathusale Josue Machabee 

Olofernes Alexandre et Sampson 

Julles Cesar Hector ausy Pompee 

Ou est Vlyxes et sa grant renommee 

Artur le roy Godefroy Charlemaine 

Daires le grant Hercules Tholomee 

Ilz sont tous mors ce monde est chose vaine. 


Feylde’s Controversy between a Lover and a Jay has a passage beginning : 


What is become 
Of Phylys and Demophon 
Alcumena and Alphytyon 


and continuing: ‘‘Where is Semele and Jocasta Cleopatre and Ixionya Semyrramys 
and Syluya So fayre of fauoure.” And at the end of The Disobedient Child, 
written about the middle of the sixteenth century, Thomas Ingelond added a song 
with the lines: 


Where is now Salamon, in wisdom so excellent ? 
Where is now Samson, in battle so strong? 
Where is now Absolon, in beauty resplendent? 
Where is now good Jonathas, hid so long? 
Where is now Caesar, in victory triumphing? 
Where is now Dives, in dishes so dainty? 


Discourses on death or on the mutability of Fortune naturally developed such 
* passages whenever the medieval writer’s taste turned to the use of the favorite 
medieval list. A more general treatment, with very brief list or none, bewailing 
_ either the transitoriness of human fame or the frailty of earthly joys, is found in all 
periods of literature. In Cicero, in Ovid (see Metam. xv :429-30), in Boethius’ 
De Consol. Philos. ii, metre vii, in the Old Eng. Wanderer, in a line of Petrarch’s 
Triumphus Mortis, in Henryson’s Cresseid, in Arnold’s Thyrsis, in James Flecker’s 
Donde Estan,—to take widely remote examples,— the theme appears. See J. L. 
Lowes’ Convention and Revolt in Poetry, chap. iii. 
This passage has been copied, as a separate extract, in the MSS Ashmole 59 
and Harley 4011; it is transcribed, with many others from the Fall, in Harley 2251. 


172 JOHN LYDGATE 


[MS Bodleian Rawlinson C 448] 


Rome remembre / of thi funda- 
cion (4460) 
And of what peeple / bu tok bi gynyng 
Thi beldyng / gan off fals discencioun 
Off slauhtre / moordre / & outrarious 
robbyng 
Yevyng to us / a maner knowlechyng 5 
A fals begynnyng / autours determyne 
Shal bi processe / come on to ruyne 


2 
‘Wher be thyn Emporours / most sover- 
eyn off renoun 
Kingis exilid / ffor outrarious levyng 
(Thi) senatours / with worthi Scip- 


ioun 10 
Poetis olde / i triumphes_ reher- 
syng (4470) 
Thi laureat knyhtis / most staatly per 
rydyng 


Thyne aureat gloire / bi noblesse ten- 
lumyne 
‘Is bi longe processe / brouht on to ruyne 


Wher is now Cesar / bat took posses- 
sioun 15 
first of bempire / be triumphe usurpyng 
Or wher is Lucan / bat makith mencioun 
Off al his conquest / bi serious writyng 
Octavyan most solempnest regnyng 
Wher is be come / per lordschippe or 
per lyne 20 
Processe off yeris / habe brouht it to 
ruyne (4480) 
4 
Wher is Tullius / cheef lanterne off pi 
toun 
In retorik / all opre surmountyng 
Morall Senek / (or) prudent sad Ca- 
toun (4490) 
Thi comoun profite / allewei proferryng 
Or rihtfull Traian / most (iust) in his 
deemyng 26 
Which on no party / list nat to declyne 
Bot longe processe / hap brouht al to 
ruyne 
5 
Wher is the temple / off pi protec- 
cioun 
Made bi Virgile / moost corious off 
beeldyng 30 


10, 24, 26. The MS reads thet, off, iustlt. 


Ymagis errect / for euery regioun 

Whan any land / was founde rebellyng 

Toward pat parte / a smal belle herde 
ryngynge 

To that prouynce / thymage dede en- 


clyne (4500) 
Which bi longe processe / was brouht 
on to ruyne 30) 

6 


Wher is also / the greet extorcioun 

Off counseilleris / & prefectis oppres- 
syng 

Off dictatours / the fals collucioun 

Off Decemvir / the ffroward deceyuyng 

And off Trybunys / be fraudelent werk- 
yng 40 

Off all ecchoun / the odious rauyne 

Hath bi processe / the brouht on to 
ruyne 

7 

Wher is be come / thi domynacioun 

Thi gret tributis / thi tresours (en- 
richyng ) (4510) 

The world all hool / in thi-subieccioun 45 


‘Thi swerd off vengaunce / al peeplis 


manacyng 
Euer gredi / tencrese in thi getyng 
Nothyng / bi grace / which bat is 
devyne 
Which hath be / brouht / bi processe tc 
ruyne 
8 
In thi most hihest / exaltacioun 50 
Thi proude tirauntis / prouyncis con- 
queryng 
To god contraire / bi longe rebellioun 
Goddis Goddessis / falsly obeieng 
Aboue the sterris / bi surquedous 


clymbyng (4520) 
Till vengaunce thi noblesse / dede 
ontwyne OF 
With newe compleyntis / to shewe pi 
ruyne 
9 


Ley doun thi pride / and thi presump- 
cioun 


' Thi pompous boost / thi lordschippis 


encresyng 
Confesse pine outrage / & lei thi boost 
adoun 
Alle false goddis pleynly diffieing 60 
Left vp pine herte / on to pat hevenli 


kyng 


FALL OF PRINCES: C 173 


Which with his blood thi sorowis for to 
fyne 

Hath maad thi raunsoun to saue be ffrom 
ruyne 10 


ffrom olde Satourne drauh pine affec- 
cioun (4530) 

His goldene world / ffulli disprisyng 65 

And ffro Jubiter / make a digressioun 

His seluerene tyme / hertli dispreisyng 

‘Resorte a geyne / with will and hool 
menyng 

To him pat is lord / off thordris nyne 

. Which meekli deide to saue pe fro 
ruyne 70 

11 

Thouh Mars be myhti in his assencioun 

Bi Influence victories disposyng 

And briht Phebus / yeueth consolacioun 

To wordli pryncis / her  noblesse 
auaunsyng (4540) 

‘ffor sake per rihtis / & thi fals offryng 75 

And to bat lord / bowe doun pi chyne 

Which shadde his blood / to saue be 
fro ruyne 

12 

Wynged Mercurie / cheeff lord and 
patroun 

Off eloquence / and off fair spekyng 

»fforsak his seruise / in thyn opynyoun 80 

And serue the lord / that gouerneth all 


thyng 

The sterrid heuene / the speeris eek 
meuyng 

Which for thi sake / was crownyd with 
a spyne 

His herte eek perced / to saue the fro 
ruyne (4550) 


13 
Cast vp off Venus / the fals derisioun 85 
Hir firi brond / hir flatereris remevyng 
‘Off Diana / the transmutacioun 
Now briht now pale / now cleer now 
dreepyng 
Off blynde Cupide / be ffraudelent 
mokkyng 
Off Juno Bachus / Proserpyna Lucyne 90 
ffor noon but crist / may saue pe fro 


ruyne 
14 


’ Voide off Circes the bestial poisoun 


Rawl. C 448 omits stanza 12, which I supply from 
Bodley 263. 


Off Cirenes / the furious chauntyng 
Lat nat Medusa / do pe no tresoun 
And ffro Gorgones / turne pi lokyng 95 
And lat Synderesis ha be in kepyng 
That crist Jesu may be bi medicyne 
Geyn such raskaill / to saue pe fro 
ruyne (4564) 


15 


Off false Idolis / mak abiuracioun 

To symulacres do no worshippyng 100 
Make thi resorte to cristis passioun 
Which may bi mercy / redresse pin 

erryng 

And bi his grace / repare thi fallyng 
So thou obeie / his vertuous discyplyne 
Truste bat he shal / restore thi ruyne 


16 


His mercy is surmountyng / off foi- 
soun (4573) 

Euer encresyth / withoute amenusyng 

Ay atte the fulle / ecche tyme & ecche 
sesoun 

And neuyr wanyth / bi noon eclipsyng 

Whan men list make / deuoutli ther 


rekenyng IIO 
To leue ber synne / & come to his doc- 
tryne 


He redi is / to keepe hem fro ruyne 


17 


*O Rome Rome / al olde abusyoun 


Off cerimonyes / falsli disusyng (4580) 
Lei hem a side / and in a conclusioun 
Cry god mercy / thi trespacis repentyng 
Truste he wil nat / refuse bine axyng 
The to resseyue / to laboure in his vyne 
Eternaly / to saue be ffro ruyne 


18 
O noble pryncis / off hih discrecioun 120 
Seeth in this worlde / ber is noon abid- 
yng 
Peisith consiens / attwen will & resoun 
While ye haue leicer / of herte Imagyn- 
yng 


‘Ye ber nat hens / but your deseruyng 


Lat this conseit / ay in your pouhtis 


myne (4591) 
Bexample off Rome / how al gobe to 
ruyne 126 


174 JOHN LYDGATE 


D 
THANKS TO GLOUCESTER 


Fall of Princes, Prologue to Book iii 


As in the prologue to book i above, so here Lydgate follows more than one 
thread. In the earlier and general introduction he had given Laurent’s explana- 
tion of the purpose of his work; he had praised in detail his master Chaucer ; and 
he had eulogized his patron Gloucester. Here again he uses Laurent’s material, 
but he incorporates also in his translation a song of praise to Humphrey for his 
gracious reward of the effort thus far expended by the poet. 

There exist in several MSS copies of a letter addressed by Lydgate to the 
duke, asking for money, a letter which according to one pair of texts was com- 
posed “in tempore translacionis libri Bochasii”. This letter (here printed p. 149) 
shows enough similarity in phrasing to suggest that it was sent at this point in 
the work, after the completion of books i and ii. If such be the case, we have 
‘here an outburst of gratitude from Lydgate for Humphrey’s gift of money, made 
in reply to a supplication still existing. There are many begging-letters yet pre- 
served in the manuscripts of this period, and many adulatory poems; but it would 
be hard to match this case of plea and thanks both remaining to us. 

The prologue divides into :—a stanza of simile, the poet comparing himself 
to a tired thirsty pilgrim; an explanation, in’ two more stanzas, of the simile; a 
disquisition on the pressure of age, incapacity, and poverty upon the poet; a paean 
of gratitude to “my lord” for relieving that poverty ; a return to the pilgrim-simile 
of the first stanza, this time followed, according to the French text, through 
stanzas 14-18; an introduction of Boccaccio’s name, and the arrival at Book iii. 

Of all this, only the pilgrim-simile comes from Laurent; the rest is either 
“original” with Lydgate or from John of Salisbury, some of whose phrases are 
borrowed. 

Stanzas 1-13 were printed by me, from this MS, in Anglia 38 :129-132. 


[Brit. Mus. Royal 18 D v, fol. 70b] 


Like a pilgrime which that gooth on 
foote 

And hath none hors to Releue his trau- 
aile- 

Hoote drie werie and finde mai no boote - 

Of welle colde whan thrust him doth as- 
saile - 

Wyne nor licoure that mai to him availe - 

*Riht so fare I which in my besinesse- 6 

No socoure finde my reudenesse to re- 
dresse - 


I meene as thus I haue no fressh licoure 

Out of the conductis of Calliope 

Nor throuh Clio-in Rethorik no floure 

In my laboure - for to refressh me - II 

Nor of the sustren - in noumbre thries 
thre - 

Which with Cithera on Pernaso dwell 


Thei neuer me gaff drink oonis of ther 
well 


3 
Nor of ther springis cleere and cristal- 
line 15 
That sprang bi touching of the Pegase- 
Ther fauour lakkith my making to en- 
lumine 
I finde ther bawme of so grete scarsete - 
To tame ther tunnys with som drope of 
plente - 
ffor poliphemus throuh his grete blynde- 
nesse - 20 
Hath in me dirkid of Argus the briht- 
nesse - 


Our life here short of witte the grete 
dulnesse - 


FALL OF PRINCES: D 175 


The heui soule troublid with trauail 

And of memoire the glacing brotilnesse - 

Dreede and vnkonning hath made a 
strong batail - 25 

With werinesse my spirit to assail 

And with ther subtil creping in most 
queinte - 

‘Hath made my spirit in making for to 
feinte 


‘And ouermore the fereful frowardnesse - 
Of mi stepmodir callid obliuioun 30 
Hath made a bastile of foryetilnesse 
To stoppe the passage and shadwe mi 
resoun 

That I myht haue no clere direccioun 

In translating of newe to quik me 
Stories to write of oolde antiquite: 35 


Thus was I sette and stood in double 
were: 

At the meting of fereful weies twein 
The tone was this who euer list to lere- 
Where as god wil gan me constrein 
Bochas to accomplish for to do mi pein 
‘Cam ignoraunce with a maas of dreede- 
- Mi penne to arest I durst nat proceede - 


7 
Thus bi my silff remembring on this 
booke - 
It to translate how I had vndirtake - 
fful pale of cheere astonid in my looke- 
Myne hand gan tremble my penne I felt 
quake - 46 
' That disespeirid I had almost forsake - 
.So grete a laboure dreedful & import- 
able - 
‘It to parfourme I fond mi silff so on able 


8 
Twene the residewe of this grete iornee 
And litil part there of that was begunne 
I stood chek maate for feere whan I gan 
see - 52 
In mi weie how litil I had runze- 
* Lik to a man that failid dai & sunne- 
And had no liht to accomplissh his viage - 
- So ferre I stood a bak in my passage - 56 


‘The nyht cam on dirkid with ignoraunce 

’ Mi witte was dulle be cleernesse to dis- 
cern: 

In Rethorik for lak of suffisaunce - 


The torchis out & queint was the lantern - 
And in this case my stile to gouern 61 
Me to forthre I fond non othir muse 
But hard as stone Pierides & Meduse 


10 


~Supporte was none my dulnesse for to 


guie- 


‘ Pouert approchid in stal crokid age: 65 


Mercuri absent and Phil(ol)ogie 

Mi purs ai liht and void of al coignage 

Bachus ferre of to glade mi corage- 

An ebbe of plente scarcete atte full 

Which of an olde man makith the spirit 
dull 70 


11 
But hope and trust to put awei dispaire 


‘In to my mynde of new gan hem dresse 


And cheef of all to make the wethir 
faire 

Mi lordis freedam and bounteuous lar- 
gesse 

In to mi hert brouht in such gladnesse 75 

That throuh releuing of his beningne 
grace: 

ffals indigence list me no more manace- 


12 
A how it is an ertheli reioishing 
To serue a prince that list to aduertise - 
Of ther seruauntis the feithful iust meen- 
ing 80 
And list considre to guerdone ther seruise 
And at a neede list (hem nat despise) - 
But from al daungere that shold hem noie 
to greue- 
Been euer redie to helpe hem and releue - 


13 
And thus releuid bi the goodliheede- 85 
And throuh the noblesse of this moost 
knihtli man 
Al mistis clerid of dispeir and dreede - 
Trust hope and feith in to my hert Ran- 
And on my labour anon forth with I gan- 
ffor bi clere support of mi lordis grace- 
All forein letting fro me I did enchace- 


14 
ffolkis that use to make grete viagis 
Which vndirfong long trauaile and 
laboure 
Whan thei haue don grete part of ther 
passagis 
Of werinesse to asswagin the Rigoure 95 


176 JOHN LYDGATE 


Agein feyntice to finde som fauoure 
Loke oft agein parcel to be releuid 
To seen hou moch there iourne is acheuid 


15 
Cause whi thei so ofte loke agein 
Bakward turne look & eeke visage: 100 
Is oonli this that it mai be sein 
To them hou moch is don of there viage- 
Eke weri folk that gon on pilgrimage 
Rest hem som while a ful large space - 
Laborious soote to wipin from there 
face - 105 
16 
There heui ffardell among thei cast doun 
At certein boundis to do there bakkis 
ese 
At wellis coolde eke of entencioun 
Drink fressh watris there greuous thurst 
to apese- 
Or holsom winis ther appetite to plese 110 
Rekning the milis bi computaciouns 
Which the(i) haue passid of castillis & 
tovnis 
17 
It doth hem ese the noumbre for to know - 
Sith thei began of mani grete iornees - 


Of hih mounteinis and of valis low- 175 

And straunge sihtis passing bi contrees - 

The vncouth bilding of borowis & Citees - 

Counting the distaunce fro tovnis & the 
spacis 

This ther talking at ther resting placis - 


18 
The residew and the surplusage - 120 
Thei rekne also of ther labour coming 
Think it is a maner vauntage - 
To haue and seen a cleere knowleching 
Of thingis passid & thingis eke folowing 
ffor to there hertis it doth ful grete 
plesaunce - 125 
Whan all such thing is put in remem- 
braunce - 
19 


And semblabli Iohn Bochas as I fynde 

Gan turne his bak look and contenauns - 

And to remembre a poy(n)ting in his 
mynde - 

To the stories rehersid in substauns 130 

In his two bookis of sorow and dis- 
plesauns - 

Him silf astonid merueling a grete dele 

The falle of princis fro fortunis whele 


[Four more stanzas complete the prologue 
to Book iii] 


E 


THE TRAGEDY OF CAESAR 
Fall of Princes vi: 2920 ff. 


In Boccaccio’s De Casibus Caesar appears only in the chapter devoted to 
Pompey and in the group-chapter between that and the story of Cicero, in which 
latter Caesar’s murder is again briefly mentioned. Laurent expands this treatment 
in the eleventh chapter of his sixth book, which is parallel to Boccaccio’s group- 
chapter ; but he mentions the murder of Caesar only to emphasize the ingratitude 

‘of Brutus and Cassius. This he expressly states; he says that if any one wonders 
at his including the noble and victorious Caesar in this crowd of unfortunates, he 
replies that all he has said of great Caesar is by way of describing the wretched 

.fate of Brutus and Cassius; Caesar is not to be classed with those miserable ones 
whose own crimes flung them down from prosperity,— it was disloyal conspiracy 
which caused his fall. 

Lydgate makes no allusion to this explanation by Laurent. In his work the 
struggle of the tyrannicides against Octavian is not included: the remainder of 
Laurent’s chapter is not used, and the envoy, on the fate of Caesar, brings the 
story of Caesar into equal prominence with that of Pompey. Brutus and Cassius 
occupy a very minor position in the English treatment. 


FALL/OF PRINCES: E 177 


One of Lydgate’s dominant notions about Caesar, taken from Lucan, is that 
he asked and was refused a triumph, before he seized power at Rome. In the 
fifteenth-century prose Serpent of Division, ascribed by one MS to Lydgate, and 
employing a vocabulary markedly Lydgatian, this refusal is very amply treated, 
and the struggle between Caesar and Pompey is made an “exemplum” of the 
evils of civil discord. The editor of the only modern text of the Serpent, Dr. 
MacCracken, conjecturally dates the work in 1422, when England was threatened 
with disorder by the sudden death of Henry V; and he suggests Gloucester as the 
patron of the translation —the exact source of which is not yet determined. 

Were these suggested circumstances, i.e. authorship, date, and patron, all 
proved fact, we might expect some allusion to the earlier work in Lydgate’s 
return here to the subject of Caesar and Pompey, even as he refers back to his 
Troy Book from i: 5946 of the Fall of Princes. No such mention is made, yet it 
appears to me very probable that the Serpent of Division is from Lydgate’s hand. 
True, that work and the Fall, or this part of the Fall, are shaped to teach 
different lessons, the one urging the horrors of civil dissension, the other em- 
phasizing the vanity and instability of earthly success. And there is in the Serpent 
a mass of material not used in the Fall at this point. But the agreements in vo- 
cabulary and in movement, still more the absence of differences on those points 
between the two works, are greater than between any two Middle English produc- 
tions by different authors known to me. Whoever wrote the Serpent not only 
admired and quoted—or rather misquoted—his master Chaucer, but uses easily a 
number of words frequent in Lydgate; for instance, ambiguity, contagious, disap- 
pear, contune, entrike, ratify, supprised, make mention, the metaphor of the ebb- 
tide, the phrase “whirlid up” for the chariot of the Sun, etc. There is the same 
sort of agreement in vocabulary between the Serpent and the Fall that exists 
between the Fall and the Troy Book; and the absence of padding phrase is to be 
expected when the constraint of rime is absent. Furthermore, there are one or two 
points of agreement between the Serpent and this part of Laurent’s version of 
Boccaccio; for instance, the list of portents before civil war in Rome, and the 
ingenuous comment by Laurent on Caesar’s refusal to read the letter of warning. 
It may be added that both the Serpent and the Fall give the bearer of this letter 
the name Tongilius (not in Laurent), and that they use an identical phrase in 
introducing him (see line 43 and note). 

But that the Serpent was translated in 1422, or antedated the Fall, is not 
proved by resemblances in vocabulary and phrasing. We do not assert that the 
writer of the Serpent used Laurent’s book, or that Lydgate knew nothing of Lau- 
rent until Gloucester entrusted him the volume for translation; but the date of 
the Serpent is not clearly of Henry VI’s accession, nor is Gloucester obviously its 
inspirer. A tolerably plausible argument could be constructed, indeed, for one of 
Gloucester’s opponents as the patron of the prose work, or for a date much nearer 
the Wars of the Roses; but the entire question is unsolved. The only point on 
which we may build is the probable identical authorship of the Fall and the prose 
treatise. 

As Dr. MacCracken says, the Serpent of Division is the earliest separate treat- 
ment in English of the life of Caesar; its existence, alongside the encyclopedia of 
tragedies, is a phenomenon worth noting. 


178 JOHN LYDGATE 


[MS Brit. Mus. Harley 1245] 


Thus bi processe all holly pe kynrede 
Of Pompeyus for shorte conclusioun 
Bi Cesar wern & be his men in deede 
Wtout mercy brouht to destruccioun 
Thus gan encres be fame & be renoun 
Of Julyus conquest on se & eke on 
londe (2820) 
Whos mortall swerde ther myht noon 
wtstonde 


2 

first in Libye Spayn & eke Itaile 

Thexperience of his Roiall puyssaunce 

In Germany by many stronge bataile 10 

His power previd in Germanye & in 
ffraunce 

Brouht all thes kyngdamys vndir tho- 
beisaunce 

Of be Romayns peisid (al) this thyng & 
seyn 

Touchyng his guerdoum his labour was 
in veyn 


Towarde Rome makyng his repaire 

Bi hym appesid Civile Dissenciouns 

Of throne Imperiall clymbyng on be 
stayre 

for be conquest of xiiine regiouns 

Of be triumphe requerid be guerdouns 

Which to (recure) his force he hath 
applied 20 

Albe be senate his conquest hath denyed 


4 
And his name more to magnyfye 
To shew be glory of his hih noblesse 
To be Capitoile fast he gan hym hye 
As Emperour his Doomys ther to dresse 
Pat day began wt joy & gret glad- 
nesse (2840) 
Pe ‘eve no thyng accordyng wt pt 
morowe 
De entre glad be eende trouble & sorowe 


5 
Calapurnya which bt was his wiff 
Had a dreme be same nyht toforn 30 
Toknes shewid of pe ffunerall striff 
How pt hir lorde was likly to be lorn 
By conspiracye compassid & sworn 
If he pt day wtout avisement 
In be Capitoile satt in Jugeme(n)t 35 


6 
She drempt allas as she lay & slept (2850) 
Pt hir lorde thoruhgirt wt many a 
wounde 
Lay in hir lapp & she be body kept 
Of womanheede like as she was bounde 
But oo Allas to soth hir Dreme was 
founde 40 
Pe next morow no lengir made Delaye 
Of his Parody was be fatall Daye 


7 
A poor man callid Tongilyus 
Which secretly be tresoun did espye 
Lete write a lettre toke it Julyus 45 
Pe caas declaryng of be conspiracye 
Which to rede Cesar list nat applye 
But oo Allas ambicious necligence 
Causid his moordre by unware violence 


8 
Cesar sittyng myd be consistorye 50 
In his astate most Imperiall 
Afftir many conquest & victorye 
ffortune awaityng to yeve hym a fall 
Wt bodkyns percyng as an all 
He moordrid was wt many a mortall 


wounde 55 

Lo how fals trust in worldely pompe is 

founde (2870) 
Lenuoye 


9 

Thoruh all this booke radde ech tragedye 
Afforn rehercid & put in remembraunce 
Is noon more woofull to my fantasye 
Pan is be fall of Cesar in substaunce 60 
Which in his hihest Imperiall puyssaunce 
Was while he wende ha be most glorious 
Moordrid at Rome of Brutus Cassyus 


10 
This marciall Prince ridyng thoruh Lom- 
bardye 
Ech Contre yolde & brouht to obey- 


saunce 65 
Passyng thallpies roode thoruh Ger- 
manye (2880) 
To subieccioun brouht be Rewme of 
ffraunce 


Gat Brutus Albioun bi long contynuaunce 
To lustris passid this manly Julyus 
Moordrid at Rome by Brutus Cassyus 


FALL OF PRINCES: F 179 


11 
Among pe Senate was be conspiracye 
All of assent & of oon accordaunce 
Whos Tryumphe thai proudly gan denye 
But maugre them was kept pe obseru- 


aunce 

His chaier of golde wt stedis of ples- 
aunce Ze 

Conveied thoruh Rome this prince most 
pompous 

Pe moordre folwyng by Brutus Cas- 
syus (2891) 


12 
Rekune his conquest rekune vp _ his 
chyualrye 
Wt a cowntirpeise of worldely vari- 
aunce 
ffortunys chaungis for his purpartye 80 
Wey all togidre cast hem in ballaunce 
Sett to of Cesar be myschevous chaunce 
Wt his parody soden & envyous 
Moordrid at Rome bi Brutus Cassyus 


13 
Bookis all & cronyclis specifye 85 
Bi Influence of hevenly purveiaunce 
Mars & Jubiter be(r)favour did applye 


Wt glad aspectis his noblesse to en- 
haunce 

Mars gaff hym knyhthoode Jubiter gov- 
ernaunce 

Amongis princis holde oon be most fam- 
ous 90 

Moordrid at Rome bi Brutus Cassyus 


14 

Biholde of Alisaundre be gret monarchye 
Which al be worlde hadd vndir obeisaunce 
Prowesse of Ector medlid wt gentrye 
Of Achilles malencolik vengeaunce 95 
Rekune of echon pe queveryng assur- 

aunce (2910) 
Among remembryng be fyne of Julyus 
Moordrid at Rome bi Brutus Cassyus 


15 
Pryncis considrith in marciall policye 
Is nouthir trust feith nor affaunce 100 
All stant in chaunge wt twynkelyng of 
an eye 
Vp towarde heven sett your attendaunce 
Pe worlde vnsure & all worldely ples- 
aunce 
Lordshipp abitt nat Recorde on Julyus 
Moordrid at Rome bi Brutus Cassyus 105 


OCTAVIAN’S REVENGE 
Fall of Princes vi: 2920 ff. 


[MS Brit. Mus. Royal 18 D v] 


Affter the moordre of this manli 
man (2920) 

This noble prince this famous emperour 

His worthi Nevewe callid Octouian 

To regne in Roome was next his succes- 
sour 

Which did his deueere bi dilligent 
labour 5 

To punsshe al tho of nature as he ouhte 

Bi rihtful dome that the moordre wrouhte 


2 

’ Cheeff conspiratour was Brutus Cassius 

Which of this moordre made al the orde- 
naunce 


Anothir Brute surnamid Decius 10 

Was oone also conspiring the veni- 
aunce (2930) 

Wrouht on Cesare he affter slain in 
ffraunce 

Here men mai seene what costis pt men 
wende 

How moordre al wai requerith an evil 
eende 

3 


With in the space almoost of thre yere 75 

Destroied wern al the conspiratours 

Bi sodein dethe and som _ stoode in 
daungere 

To be bansshid or exilid as tretours 


180 JOHN LYDGATE 


And as it is croniclid bi auctours 

Space of thre yere reknid oone bi oone 20 

Deied at myscheeff the moordereris 
euerychone 


To moordre a prince it is a_ pitous 
thing (2941) 
God of his riht wil take ther of veniaunce 


Nameli an emperour so famous in eche 


thing 
Which al the worlde had in gouern- 
aunce 25 


Rekne his conquest digne of Remem- 
braunce 
Al peisid in oone bochas berith witnesse 


‘In hih estate is litil sikirnesse 


G 


THE TRAGEDY OF CICERO 
Fall of Princes vi: 2948-3276 


In this chapter Lydgate in general follows Laurent, although he adds the 
list of Cicero’s works, lines 215-227, from Vincent of Beauvais, and takes details 
of the dream and of Cicero’s death from Valerius Maximus. 

Cicero occupied in the imagination of medieval clerks a place with Homer 
and Aristotle, and was much better known than they. Allusions to him, citations 
from him, practices supported by his authority, are scattered all over medieval 
literature. Lydgate could find his name, and a citation, at every turn in gram- 
marians such as Priscian or Nonius Marcellus; he could read excerpts in John 
of Salisbury (“prudent Carnotence” to Lydgate) and in Isidor; he could find 
anecdotes of Cicero in Aulus Gellius, in the Polychronicon, and sheaves of se- 
lections in Vincent of Beauvais. Isidor and Valerius Maximus were, we know, in 
the great library of Lydgate’s own monastery; and the way in which he quotes 
Aulus Gellius (‘‘Agellius”) and Vincent shows that he had access to the texts, 
both of which were in the possession of Humphrey of Gloucester, as was an “Ex- 
positio super Valerium Maximum.” But citations from Cicero, or “Tullius”, as 
Lydgate always calls him, are not numerous in the monk’s work, and are of a 
sort that could derive from an Ars dictandi or a Florilegium. There is no proof 
of any such intimacy as was John of Salisbury’s, for instance. 


{MS Brit. Mus. Royal 18 D v] 


Myne auctour here writ no long processe The musis nyne me thouht as I toke 
Of Julius dethe compleining but a while heede (2960) 
To write of Tullie.in haste he gan him A croune of laurer set uppon his hede 
dresse (2950) 

Compendiousli his liff for to compile Bochas astonid gan of him silff con- 
Compleining first seith his barein stile 5 ide 15 
Is insufficient to_write eee His looke abasshid dulle of his corage 
Of so notable a Rethoricien Thouht his termis & resouns were to rude 
That he lakkid konning & language 
Where bi he sholde to his auauntage 
Thouh he laborid writing al his lyue 20 


Laumpe and lanterne of Romaine ora- : ahs 
Z Of Tullius the meritis to descryue 


tours 
Amonge hem callid prince of Eloquence + 
On Pernaso he gadrid up the flours 10 Wher of supprisid he kauht a fantasie 
This Rethoricien most of excellence With in hym silff remembring anone 
Whos meritis treuli to recompence riht (2970) 


FALL OF PRINCES: G 181 


Thouh it so falle som tyme a cloudie skie 

Be chaacid with wynde affore the sonne 
briht 25 

Yit in effecte it lassith nat his liht 

So bochas dempte that his dulle writing 

Eclipsid nat of Tullius the shining 


5 
‘With rude language a man mai wele 
reporte 
The laude of triumphees and conquestis 
meruelous 30 
Which thing remembring greteli gan com- 
forte 


The herte of bochas & to him silff spak 
thus 

Too colours sein that be  contrari- 
ous (2980) 

As white and blak it mai be none othir 

Eche in his kinde shewith more for 
othir 35 


-In phebus presence sterris lese there liht 

-Clere at myddaie apperith nat lucine 

‘The fame of Tullie whilom shone so 
briht 

‘Prince of fair speche fadir of that doc- 
trine 

‘Whos briht beemys in to this houre do 
shine 40 

Sotheli quod bochas of wham whan I 
endite 

-Myne hand I fele quaking while I write 


7 
But for to yeue folk occasioun (2990) 
Which in Rethorik haue more experiens 
Than haue I and more inspeccioun 45 
In the colours and crafft of eloquens 
Them to excite to do there dilligens 
Vnto my writing whan thei mai attende 
Of compassioun my rudenesse to amende 


8 

‘Vnto him silff hauing this language 50 
‘Bochas to write gan his penne dresse 
Vndir support afforcid his corage 
To remembre the excellent noblesse 
Of this Oratowr which with the suetnesse 
Of his ditees abroode as thei haue 

shined 55 
Hath al this world most clereli enlumined 


-This Tullius this singulere famous man 
‘ffrist to remembre of his natiuite 
‘Born at Arpinas a Cite of Tuskan 


Of bloode Roial descendid who list se 60 

Grekissh bookis of olde antiquite 

*Made of Rethorik and in there vulgare 
songe 

He translatid in to latine tonge 


10 

.In tendir youthe his contree he forsoke 
And fro Tuskan his passage he gan 

dresse 65 
‘Toward Rome the riht weie he toke 
Entring the Citee the renommed noblesse 
Hid in his persone shewid the brihtnesse 
Of diuers vertuis tyme while he abood 
That lik a sonne his fame sprad abrood 70 


11 
ffor his vertuis made a Citesein 
The good reporte of him shone so cleere 
Lik as he had be born a Romain (3020) 
In there fauoure his name was so enteere 
-Among hem chose for a consuleere 75 
Agein the Cite tyme of his consulat 
‘Whan Cataline was with hem at debat 


12 
Bi the prudence of this Tullius 
And his manhood reknid bothe Ifeere 
‘Catalina most cruel & irous 80 
ffroward of porte & froward of his cheere 
Besy euer to fynde out the manere 
How he myht bi any tokne or signe 


(3010) 


‘Agein the Cite couertli maligne (3031) 
13 

Sixe hundrid yere foure score told and 

nyne 85 


Reknid of rome fro the fundacioun 

This cruel tiraunt this proud Catalyne 

»Made with othre a coniuracioun 

»Agein ffraunchises and ffredam of the 
toun 

first discurid as bookis tel can 90 

In the parties and boundis of Tuskan 


14 

The purpos holie of this Catalyne 
Ymaginid on fals couetice 

‘Was to bring Rome on to Ruine 
And there uppon in many sondri wise 95 
ffond out meenys weies gan devise 

To his entent bi dilligent laboure 

In the Citiee gan gete him grete fauoure 


15 
But finalli his coniuracioun 
Discurid was bi oone Quincius 100 


(3040) 


182 JOHN LYDGATE 


Which was afforne fals on to the toun 

Tolde al the caas vn to Tullius 

‘Bi whose prudence and werking meruel- 
ous (3050) 

‘Bi helpe of Antoyne that was his fellawe 

‘The coniuracioun was broken & with 
drawe 105 

16 

‘Bi witte of Tullie al the coniuratours 

‘Espied werne and brouht on to mys- 
chaunce 

There namys rad to fore the Senatours 

Of there falsheede tolde al the gouer- 
nauns 

Manli ordeinid throuh his purueauns 170 

With al his peeple as made is mencioun 

Catalyna departid from the toun 


17 
- With Antoyne the said Catalyne 
‘Beside Pistoye had a grete batail 
Slayne in the ffeelde he myht nat de- 
clyne 115 
ffor he aboode whan the feelde gan fail 
Powere of oone litil mai auail 
Nameli whan falsheed of malice and of 
pride 
Ageins trouth dare the bronte abide 


18 

Ther was anothir callid lentulus 120 
Of his fellawis that namid was ffabyne 
The thridde of hem eeke callid Ceregus 
All assentid and sworne to Catalyne 
Stranglid in prisoune at myscheeff did 

fyne (3071) 
Cause Tullius did execucioun 125 
Tulliane was callid the prisoun 


(3060) 


19 
Thus koude he punsshe tretours of the 
toun 
Outraie there enemies of manhod & 
prudence 


Callid of there Cite gouernour & patroun 

Sent from aboue to be there diffence 130 

There champioun most digne of reuer- 
ence 

Chose of there goddis there Cite for to 
uy (3079) 

-Bi too prerogatiuis knyhthod & clergy 


20 
Lik a sonne he did hem enlumine 
Bi hih prowesse of knihtli excellens 135 
And throuh the world his bemys did shine 


Of his Rethorik and his eloquens 

In which he had so grete experiens 

Bi circumstauncis that nothing did lakke 
He transcendid Policius & Gracce 140 


21 
Of Oratours it is put in memorie 
‘This Tullius throuh his hih renoun 
Of al echone the honour and the 
glorie (3090) 
Was youe to him as made is mencioun 
Surmountid alle and in conclucioun 145 
‘The golden trumpe of the hous of fame 
‘Throuh al the world bleuh abrode his 
name 
22 
‘He kneuh secretis of philosophie 
Cam tathenis to scole for doctrine 
Where he profitid so greteli in clergi 150 
‘In al sciencis heuenli & divine (3098) 
“That he was callid as auctours determine 


‘Amonge Romains of verrai dewe riht 
' Of eloquence the lanterne & the liht 


23 
It is remembrid among Oratours 155 
How Tullius pletid causis tweyn 
In the Romain courte affore the Sena- 
tours 
The cause diffending bi language sou- 
ereyn 
Of too accusid gein hem pt did plein 
On there diffautis them sauing fro mis- 
cheeff 160 
The court escaping fro daunger & mys- 
cheeff 
24 


‘Thes causis twein he pletid in latyn 
‘With so excellent flouring fair lan- 


guage (3110) 
With such resouns concludid atte fyn 
That he be wisdam kauht the auaun- 

tage 165 
In his mateeris with al the surplusage 
That myht auaile vnto his partie 
‘What he said there coude no man denie 


25 
‘Among Greekis at Athenis the Citee 


He was so grete of reputacioun 170 

So famous holde of auctorite 

To be comparid bi there oppinioun 

‘To the philosophre that callid was pla- 
ton (3120) 

To whos cradille bees did abraid 

And hony soote thei on his lippis laid 175 


FALL OF PRINCES: G 183 


26 
A pronostik lik as bookis telle 
Plato shold bi famous excellens 
Of Rethorik be verrai sours & welle 
ffor his language meroure of eloquens 
‘Yit the Greekis recordin in sentens 180 
How Tullius in partie and in all 
‘Was vnto Plato in Rethorik egall 


27 
Throuh his language this said Tul- 
lius (3130) 
‘Reconsilid bi his soote Orisouns 
To the lordshippe and grace of Julius 185 
‘Princis kingis of diuers Regiouns 
‘That suspecte stood bi accusaciouns 
Be cause thei did Julius disobeie 
Were enclyned with Romains to Pompeie 


28 
“He koude appese bi his prudent lan- 
guage 190 
‘ffolkis that stood at discencioun 
Bi crafft he had a special auauntage 
ffauour singulere in pronunciacioun 
In his demening grete prudence and 
resoun (3141) 
ffor the pronouncing of mateeris in sub- 
staunce 195 
His thank receivith bi cheere & contin- 
aunce 


To a glad mateere longith a glad cheere 

Men trete of wisdam with woordis of 
sadnesse 

Pleyntis requeere affter the mateere 

Greuous or mortal a cheere of heui- 
nesse 200 

Lik as the cause outhir the processe 

Yevith occasioun to hynderen or to 


speed 
The doctrine in Tullius men mai 
reed (3150) 


The name of Tullie was kouthe in mani 
place 

His elloquence in euery lond was riff 

His language made hym stonde in grace 

And be preferrid during al his liff 

’Maried he was and had a riht fair wiff 

Childre many seruauntis yonge & oolde 

And as I fynde he heelde a good hous- 
oolde 210 

31 
- De officijs he wrote bokis thre 
- De amicicia I fynde how he wrote oone 


Of age anothir notable for to se (3160) 
Of moral vertu thei tretid euerychone 


‘And as Vincent wrcte ful yore agone 215 


In his meroure callid historiall 


-Noumbre of his bookis be there remem- 


brid all 
ae 


‘He wrote also the dreme of Scipioun 


Of Rethorikes compilid bookis tweine 
And tweine he wrote of diuinacioun 220 
Of cithe lond to write he did his peine 
A large booke of glorie that is veine 


‘De Repuplica and as he seyth him 


selue (3170) 
‘Of his Orisouns he wrote bookis twelue 


33 


‘And of his dictes that callid be morall 225 


Is remembrid notabli in deede 

In the said merourg historiall 

And yit this said Tullius as I reede 

Mid his worshippis stoode all wai in 
dreede 

Of ffortune for in conclucioun 230 

He by envie was bansshid Rome toun 


34 
Beyng in exile this famous Tullius 
In campania at Ative the Cite 
Receivid he was of oone Plancius 
A man pt tyme of grete auctorite 235 
And while that he aboode in that contre 
Sleping a nyht the booke makith men- 
cioun 
How that he had a wondir visioun 


(3180) 


35 
He thouht thus as he laie sleping 
In a deserte and a grete wildirnesse 240 
ffynding no pathe but to & fro erring 
How he mette clad in grete richesse 
Gayus Marrius a prince of grete no- 
blesse (3190) 
Axing Tullie with sad contenaunce 
What was cheeff ground & cause of his 
greuaumce 245 


36 
Whan Tullius had him the cause toolde 
Of his desese and his mortal woo 
Marrius with his hand set on him hoolde 
To a seriaunt assignid him riht thoo 
And in all haste bad he shold goo 250 
To conveie him doon his besi cure 
In al haste possible to his sepulture 


184 JOHN LYDGATE 


37 

Wher he shold haue tidingis of ples- 

aunce (3200) 
Of his repair into Rome toun 
Been allegid of his olde greuaunce 255 
This was the eende of his avisioun 
The next morowe as made is mencioun 
‘There was hold to Tullius grete avail 
To fore Jubiter in Rome a grete counsail 


38 

Within the temple bilt bi marrius 260 
The Senatours accordid were certein 
‘To reconcile this prudent Tullius 
Out of his exile to calle him home 

agein (3210) 
Affter receivid as lord and souerein 
Of elloquence be assent of the Senat 
' ffulli restorid vn to his frist estat 


39 
‘This thing was done whan pt in Rome 
toun 
The striiff was grettist twene Cesare and 
Pompeie 


And for Tullius drouh him to Catoun 
With Pompeius Cesare to werreie 270 
‘And of lulius the partie disobeie 

‘Out of Rome Tullius did him hih 

‘fled with Pompeie in to Thessalie (3220) 


40 

‘Cesare affter of his free mocioun 
-Whan that he stood hihest in his glori 275 
-Hym reconciled agein to Rome toun 
Vppon Pompeie accomplisshid the vic- 

tori 
But Julius slain in the consistori 
Be sixti Senatours beyng of assent 
Tullius agein was into exile sent 280 


41 
And in a cite callid ffaryman 
Tullius his exile did endure (3229) 
‘ffor Antonyus was to him enmy than 
Be cause that he par cas of auenture 
Compiled had an Inuentiff scripture 285 
‘Agein Antony rehersing al the caas 
Of his diffautis & of Cleopatraas 


42 

Thus of envie and of mortal hattereed 
His dethe compassid by Antonyus 
And affterward execut in deed 290 
Bi procuring of oone Pompilius 
Gat a commissioun the storie telleth thus 
Of fals malice and foorthe anone went 

he (3240) 


In to Gayete of Compaigne a cite 


43 
And bi the vertu of his commissioun 295 
Taking of Antoyne licence and liberte 
Cheeff Rethorician that euer was in the 
toun 
Among Romains to worship the cite 


‘Was slain allas of hate and enmyte 
‘Bi Pompilius roote of al falsheed 300 


Profring him silff to smyten of his heed 


44 
Tullius afforn had ben his diffence 
ffro the Galwes and his dethe eke 
let (3250) 
Which had disseruid for his grete offence 
To haue ben hangid vppon an hih 
Gibet 305 
Who saueth a theeff whan the Rope is 
knet 
About his neck as olde clerkis write 
With som fals turne the bribour wil him 
quite 
45 
Lo here the vice of ingratitude 
Be experience brouht fulli to a preeff 310 
Who in his hert tresoun doth include 
Cast for good wille to doon a man repreeff 
What is the guerdoun for to saue a 
theeff (3260) 
Whan he is scapid looke ye shal fynde 
Of his nature euere to be vnkynde 315 


46 
This Pompilius tretour most odible 
To shewe him silff fals (cruel & venge- 
able) 
Toward Tullie did a thing horrible 
Whan he was deede this bribour most 


coupable 
Smet of his riht hand to heere abhomin- 
able 320 


With which honde he leuing on him toke 
To write of vertuis mani a famous boke 


47 
The hand the heede of noble Tul- 


lius (3270) 
Which eueri man auhte of riht com- 
pleine 


Were take and brouht bi Popilius 325 

Vppon a stake set up bothe tweine 

There to abide where it did shine or reine 

With wynde and wedir til thei were 
diffied 

In tokne al fauour was to him denied 


FALL OF PRINCES: H 185 


H 


THE TRAGEDY OF BOETHIUS 
Fall of Princes viii :2626-2660 


Laurent de Premierfait’s eighteenth chapter, which represents one of Boc- 
caccio’s group-chapters and very much expands it, mentions among other ill-fated 
sovereigns the Eastern Roman emperor Leo, the emperor Zeno who dethroned 
and succeeded Leo, the anxiety of Zeno at Odoacer’s seizure of Italy, the cam- 
paign of Theodoric, Zeno’s Ostrogothic general, against Odoacer, Theodoric’s 
assumption of the crown after Odoacer’s defeat, and the subsequent abuse of 
“Theodoric’s power by unworthy ministers, against whom Boethius protested. The 
‘French writer warmly praises Boethius, going much more into detail than did 
‘Boccaccio, who gave but a very brief account, with no mention of the cause of 
Boethius’ imprisonment, which Laurent discusses quite fully; Laurent says that 
among the accusations against Boethius was that “de auoir familiarite auec les 
mauuais esperitz”, because he, “comme vray philosophe”, had avoided the mul- 
‘titude and preferred solitude. He calls Boethius not only “noble docteur de phil- 
osophie” but “homme catholicque’”, and denounces the cruelty of Theodoric, who 
even threw down the images on Boethius’ tomb after his death. His emphasis on 
Boethius’ wisdom and on the permanence of his influence is repeated several times. 

But nothing of Laurent’s sympathy appears in Lydgate, whose account is 

*cool and brief. The facts are from Laurent, but Laurent’s tone is not there, nor 

Chaucer’s respect, nor Walton’s knowledge and admiration. There are in Lyd- 
gate four other references at least to Boethius; he is mentioned in the list of 
Chaucer’s works, Fall of Princes i: 291-2 (see p. 161 here), and in Troy Book 
iv:3008-{1 his warning against trusting Fortune is cited. The same warning 
appears in the poem Thoroughfare of Woe, printed by Halliwell; p. 122; and in 
the Entry of Henry VI, ibid. p. 11, Boethius represents the art of music. 

Were these all the traces of Boethius in Lydgate, the monk’s neglect of a 
writer so beloved of Chaucer would seem marked indeed; but in the Fabula 
Duorum Mercatorum 743-46 I find a close and spirited translation of a bit from 
the opening metre of the Consolatio, a translation entirely independent of Chaucer. 
It runs: 

O deth, desyred in aduersite, 
Whan thu are callyd, why nylt thu wrecchys heere 


And art so redy in felicite 
To come to them that the nothyng desire. 


[MS Bodl. Rawl. C 448] 


The said Boys / oonly for his trouthe - 
Exilid was / allas it was gret 
routhe - (3632) 
Z 


Afftir thes mischeeuys / Symak gan him 
drawe - 

Toward bochas / with a ful pitous face - 

Boys cam with him / bt was his sone 


in lawe- ffor comon profite / he was vnto the 
Which amonge Romayns / gretly stood toun - 

in grace- In mateers / that groundid were on riht- 
But in this mateer / breeffly forth to Verray protectour / & stedfast cham- 

Dace - 5 pioun - 10 


186 JOHN LYDGATE 


A geyn to tyrauntis / which off force & 
miht - 

Hadde in the poraill / oppressid many a 
wiht « 

Bi exacciouns & pillagis gonne off newe - 

Vppon the comons / ful fals & riht 
vntrewe - 


3 
Whan Theodorik / off Gothes lord & 
kyng - 15 
Took vppon him / bi fals Intrusioun - 
To regne in Rome / the peeple oppres- 
syng - (2642) 
Bi his too prouostis / as maad is men- 
cioun - 
Dide in the Citee / gret oppressioun - 
Confederat / as brothir vnto brothir- 20 
Coningaste & Trigwille was the tothir - 


Compendiously this mateer to declare - 


To saue his comon / Boys stood in dif- 
fence - 

ffor liff nor dethe / he list nat for to 
spare - 

To withstonde / off tyrauntis / the sen- 


tence - 25 
Kyng Theodorik / off cruel vio- 
lence - (2652) 


Banschid him / bi hateful tyrannye - 
He & his fadre / tabide in Pauye- 


2 
Afftirward / Theodorik / off hatreede - 
Lik a fals Tyraunt / off malis & envie - 30 
Yaff Jugement / that bothe too were 
dede - 
But touchyng / Boys / as bookis specefie - 
Wrotte dyuers bookis / off philosophie - 
Off the Trynyte / maters / pat were 
dyuyne - 
Martryd for crist / and callid Seueryne - 


K 


FROM THE EPILOGUE TO THE FALL OF PRINCES 
Book ix: 3387-3442 


The portion of the Fall of Princes epilogue here cited is preceded by twelve 
stanzas addressed directly to Gloucester, describing the fears with which Lydgate 
undertook the assigned task, and his own shortcomings; Lydgate prays his lord 
to have compassion on his ignorant efforts. In the thirteenth stanza, at which 
point our extract begins, the monk turns to the general public; and the fourteen 
stanzas beyond line 3442 discuss the De Casibus as a book, and the mutability of 

‘Fortune. Another six stanzas, with separate heading, are directed to Gloucester, 
and a final five dismiss the book to the world. It is the general apology to the 
.public which we have here, an apology with more literary flavor than other parts 
of the Epilogue. 

In it Lydgate protests his ignorance of Homer, of Seneca, of Virgil, of Ovid, 
of Dares Phrygius, of Chaucer; he mentions Gower, Strode, and the Hermit of 
Hampole as judges of these matters, and Chaucer as the peerless narrator. Chau- 
cer wrote tragedies, as did Petrarch and Boccaccio; but he, Lydgate, has ventured 
into that field only “by constreynt.” His inadequacy is hopeless; he was never 
favored of the Muses, and can only say that he has done his poor best. 


[MS Brit. Mus. Royal 18 B xxxi] 


To forthre my penne wt colours of 
But stoupe & halt / for lake of ello- cadence (3990) 

quence «Nor moral Senec most sad of his sen- 
Thouh Omerus heeld nat the torch liht tence 5 


And semblably thouh I goo nat vpriht 


FALL OF PRINCES: K 187 


Gaf me no part / of his moralites 
’ Therfor I say / thus knelyng on my knes 


To al tho that shal pis booke beholde 

‘I them beseeke to haue compassion 

.& therwtal / I pray hem that bei wolde 10 
. ffavoure the metre & do correccion 

Of gold nor assur / I had no foison 

Nor othir colours / pis processe ten- 


lumyne 
‘Sauf whit & blake & bei but dully 
shyne (3400) 


I nevir was acqueyntid wt Virgile 15 
Nor wt pe sugrid ditees of Omer 
Nor Dares frigius / wt his golden stile 
Nor wt Ouyd / in poetre most enteer 
Nor wt pe sovereyn balladis of Chauncer 
Which among al pat euer wer rad or 
song 20 
Excellid al othir / in our ynglish tong 


I can nat been a Iuge in this mateer 

As I conceive folwyng in fantasy 

‘In moral mateer / ful notable was 
Gower (3410) 

And so was Stroode / in his Philosophy 

In parfit lyvyng / which passith poysy 

Richard Hermyte / contemplatif of sen- 
tence 

Drouh in ynglissh / the prike of con- 
science 


As pe gold tressid / briht somer sonne 
Passith othir sterris wt his bemys cleer 30 
And as Lucyna cacheth skyes donne 


The frosty nyhtis whan Espirus doth 
apper 


~Riht so my maister had neuer peer 
*I meene Chauncer / in stories pat he 


tolde (3420) 
And he also wrot / tragedies olde 35 


The fal of princis / gan pitously com- 
pleyn 

As Petrake did / and also Iohn Bochas 

Laureat Franceis Poetis both tweyn 

Tolde howe princes / for ther gret tres- 


pace 
Wer ove(r)throwe / rehersyng al pe 
cas 40 


As Chaucer did in be monkis tale 
But I that stonde / low doun in the vale 


So gret a booke in ynglyssh to trans- 
late 


‘Did it by constreynt & no presump- 


cion (3430) 


‘Born in a village / which called is 


Lidgate 45 
In olde tym / a famous castel toun 
In Danys tyme / it was bett doun 
Tyme whan seynt Edmond martir maid 
& Kyng 
Was slayn at Oxne / record of writyng 


I me excus / now this booke is do 450 
How I was neuer / yit at Citharon 


‘Nor on be monteyn callid Pernaso 


Wher nyne musis / ha ther mansion 
But to conclude / myn entencion (3440) 


‘I wil proceed / forth wt whit & blake 55 
‘And wher I faile / late Lidgate bere pe 


lake 


BENEDICT BURGH’S LETTER TO JOHN LYDGATE 


Very little is known of Benedict or “Benet” Burgh, an ecclesiastic of some 
standing in the latter fifteenth century. He was born ca.1413, received an Uni- 
versity training and a Master’s degree at Oxford (1433), and died in 1483 as 
Archdeacon of Colchester and Canon of St. Stephen’s Westminster. His prosper- 
ous although inconspicuous career in the Church seems to have been bound up with 
the patronage of the influential Bourchier family, but on one occasion at least a 
rich prebend was given him by the hand of Edward the Fourth direct. In the 
few bits of literary work which Burgh has left there is little or nothing of the 
personal such as we find abundantly in Hoccleve, more than a little in Bokenam, 
occasionally in the Palladius-translator. This address to Lydgate is the least di- 
dactic and most living of his productions. He is credited with: 1, a paraphrase 
of the Disticha Catonis so exceedingly popular in the late Middle Ages ; 2, a Christ- 
mas Game or poem on the Apostles, twelve stanzas, preserved in only one MS 
of the latter fifteenth century ; 3, the continuation of Lydgate’s Secreta Secretorum 
after his master’s death; 4, the brief poem below printed, preserved only by John 
Stow in a copy of 1558; 5, a five-stanza “Lesson to keep well the tongue”, simi- 
larly preserved; 6, the “ABC of Aristotle’, now known to be not Burgh’s, but 
by Benet of Norwich. For this last fact see Foerster, in Archiv 117: 371-5; and 
for prints of the poems numbered 2, 4, and 5 see Foerster, Archiv 101: 29-64, 
where the data on Burgh’s life are brought together. 

There is no certain date for this brief production, but Foerster, in his careful 
article on Burgh, Archiv 101, suggests the years 1433-40, while Burgh was, 
it is supposed, Vicar of Maldon in Essex, This is supported by the author’s dating 
of his letter from Bylegh Abbey, at Little Maldon; a detail unmentioned by 
Foerster is that not many miles separated the Abbey from Hatfield Broadoak, Es- 
sex, where Lydgate was Prior from 1423 to 1434. It is not impossible, al- 
though entirely conjectural, that Burgh at the opening of his Maldon life wrote 
(and sent?) this verse-tribute to the older man for whom he professes so ardent 
an admiration, and whose neighbor he had just become. 

In the poem Burgh discourses enthusiastically on Lydgate’s scholarship, and 
enumerates the classics known to Lydgate’s “innate sapience”,— Virgil, Homer, 
Boethius, Ovid, Terence, Persius, Lucan, Martianus Capella, Horace, Statius, 
Juvenal, and Boccaccio. Two of this list, Terence and Horace, are so far as 
I know unmentioned and unquoted by Lydgate; Lucan and Statius are named 
twice or thrice each, but there is no evidence that either the Pharsalia or the 
Thebais was used by Lydgate. To Virgil and to Homer his allusions, though fairly 
frequent, are mere formulae. Persius is once mentioned (FaPrinces iv:61), ina 
prologue on “letters” which, as I have suggested, was composed not only in def- 
erence to Gloucester’s taste, but in dependence on his books, or at least on their 
titles. Juvenal is named in the same prologue, along with Aesop, and in the Fall 
of Princes Lydgate twice cites the bit about the poor man singing before the thief, 
without Juvenal’s name; but he could get this, and the author’s name, from the 
Wife of Bath’s Tale of Chaucer. Nor, in his three allusions which I have noted 
to Martianus Capella and the De Nuptiis, is there anything which could not come 
from Chaucer’s remark in the Merchant’s Tale or from the mere heading of the 


[ 188 ] 


LEDER LOVELY DGATE 189 


work. The monk’s very slight knowledge of Boethius, despite the interest felt by 
Chaucer, is discussed p. 185 here; Boccaccio’s De Casibus, in a French prose ver- 
sion, was perhaps at this very time in Lydgate’s hands, and he seems to have used 
the De Genealogia direct in other poems. But the only author of this list whom 
Lydgate not only mentions but has read sufficiently to quote of his own volition 
is Ovid; and this happens mainly in the Fall of Princes, on which the monk was 


engaged from ?1431 to 1438. 


Burgh’s compliment could hardly have less real foundation. 


Other prints of Burgh’s work have been :— 

Steele, ed. of the Secreta Secretorum for the EETS, 1894. 

Foerster, ed. of the Cato, Archiv 115:298-323 and 116:25 ff., from 24 MSS. Cp. Gold- 
berg, Der englische Cato, Leipzig diss., 1883. 

The Christmas Game, ed. by Thomas Wright in his volume of Carols, 1841, pp. 28-31; 
by Furnivall in Notes and Queries for May 16, 1868; by Fligel, Anglia 14 :463-66., 
Foerster, Archiv 101:52, gives a list of Fliigel’s errors. 

This poem to Lydgate is printed by Steele as above, p. xxxi-xxxii. Foerster in Ar- 
chiv 101:47-48 gives a list of Steele’s errors. 


On the manuscript see p. 194 below. 


[John Stow’s MS, Brit. Mus. Adds. 29729, fol. 6] 


Nat dremyd I in y® mownt of pernaso 

ne dranke I nevar at pegases welle 

the pale pirus saw I never also 

ne wist I never where y® muses dwelle 

ne of goldyn Tagus can I no thynge 
telle 

And to wete my lippis I cowde not 
atteyne 

In citero or elicon sustres tweyne / 


The crafte of speche that some tyme 
founde was 

of the famous philosophers moste perfite 

Aristotell gorge and ormogenes 10 

nat have I. so I have lerid but a lite 

As for my party thowgh I repent I may 
go qwite 

of tullius frauncis and quintilian 

fayne wolde I lere . but I not conceyve 
can / 


The noble poete virgil the mantuan 15 

Omere the greke and torqwat sovereyne 

Naso also that sith this worlde firste be 
gan 

the marvelist transformynge all best can 
devyne 

Terence y® mery and plesant theatryne 

Stow’s heading is nearly all trimmed away, but his 


copy is from some one’s “booke dwelyng at 
wyndsor.” 


porcyus lucan marcyan and orace 20 
stace Iuvenall and the lauriate bocase / 


All thes hathe seyne . youre Innate sa- 
pience 

ye have gadred flowris in this motli mede 

to yow is yeven the ver(r)ay price of 
excellence 

thowghe they be go yet the wordis be 
not dede 25 

thenlumynyd boke where in a man shall 
rede 

thes and mo be in this londe legeble 

ye be the same ye be the goldyn bible / 


5 

O yet I truste to be holde and see 
this blisfull booke wt y® goldyn clasppes 

seven 30 
ther I wyll begyne and lerne myne a.b.c. 
that wer my paradyse, that wer my heven 
gretar filicitie can no man neven 
so god my sowle save, a benedicite 
Maister lidgate, what man be ye / 35 


6 
Now god my maister, preserve yow longe 
on lyve 
that yet I may be yowr prentice or I dye 
then sholde myne herte at y® porte of 
blise aryve 


190 BENEDICT BURGH 


ye be the flowre, and tresure of poise 

the garland of Ive, and lawre of vic- 
torye 40 

by my trowghte & I myght ben a em- 
perowr 

for yowr konynge I shulde yowr heres 
honor / 


7 
writen at thabbey of bylegh chebri place 
with frosti fingers, and nothynge pliaunt 
when from the high hille I men y® mownt 


canace 45 
was sent in to briton the stormy per- 
saunt 


that made me loke as lede & chaunge 
semblant 

and eke y® sturdi wynde of yperborye 

made me of chere vnlusti sadde & sory / 


The laste moneth that men clepe de- 
cembre 50 

when Phebus chare was dryven a bowte 
y® heven 

yf we reken a ryght & well remembre 

fowre tymes onys and aftar ward seven 

that is to sey passid ther war days a 
leven 

of the moneth when this vnadvisid 
lettar 55 

writ was, but wt yowr helpe here aftar 
bettar / 


explicit 
per magistrum burgh ad Ioannem 
lidgate / 


JOHN SHIRLEY: TWO VERSIFIED TABLES OF CONTENTS 


John Shirley, a warm admirer and zealous copyist of Chaucer and of Lyd- 
gate, was for the latter part at least of his ninety-years’ life a resident of London, 
where he died in 1456. Stow in his Survey mentions the monument to him and 
his wife in the church of St. Bartholomew the Less; see Kingsford’s edition of 
the Survey, ii: 23-4, for the verse-epitaph on that monument. The Dict. Nat. Biog. 
describes Shirley as “translator and transcriber” ; and from an entry in the records 
of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital it appears that in 1456 John Shirley was renter of a 
large tenement with four shops, belonging to the Society.1_ Considering the char- 
acter of Shirley’s existing manuscripts and the number of volumes partly copied 
from his work, it becomes a question if Shirley were not one of England’s earliest 
publishers. These two tables of contents, and his verse “bookplate”’, show him 
as the proprietor and manufacturer of a lending library ; and in his long “gossiping” 
headings to separate poems,—as Bradshaw termed them,—Shirley addresses “my 
lords and ladies” much in the tone of a modern publisher’s jacket, explaining the 
work to follow and commending it to his readers with friendly respect. This also 
befits the lending library; but Shirley was a translator as well. Most of his ex- 
isting work of that sort is in the MS Brit. Mus. Adds. 5467, a volume not written 
in his hand but probably copied from him, as it retains his headings and his 
tricks of spelling. This volume has been discussed by Gaertner in his dissertation 
on Shirley, Halle, 1904, and by Brusendorff, pp. 213-15. 

There are two facts which contribute to the supposition that Shirley may have 
managed more than a lending library, that his London shops were used on a 
larger scale than one man’s activity would need. First, a number of existing MSS 
which do not show his script show the influence of his text. For instance, two 
codices of the British Museum, Harley 2251 and Adds. 34360, written in one 
and the same hand, reproduce texts with Shirley’s headings, derived probably 
from his volume now Trin. Coll. Cambr. R 3,20; this is especially true of the 
Harley manuscript. Also, the copy of the Canterbury Tales in Brit. Mus. Harley 
7333, although not in Shirley’s hand, preserves his marginalia, his “Nota per Shir- 
ley” against passages that interested him. And a single isolated text may in similar 
way show a Shirleyan archetype; cf. the poem printed by MacCracken on p. 260 
of his EETS edition of Lydgate’s Minor Poems, from MS Brit. Mus. Cotton 
Titus A xxvi. When we observe that the same man who wrote the Harley and 
Additionals volumes above mentioned also wrote the copy of the Canterbury Tales 
surviving in the College of Physicians’ library, and wrote part of that in the MS 
Brit. Mus. Royal 17 D xv, etc.; when we see another man working with him on 
this latter volume; when we recognize the possibility that both men were writing 
in a place where a Shirley volume (? R 3, 20) and other manuscripts were at 
hand,—we conjecture again as to the business conducted in those four shops in 
Shirley’s later years. 

The extent of Shirley’s influence on English “publishing conditions” has yet 
to be estimated ; his importance as a preserver of Chaucerian and Lydgatian texts 


u an See Sir Norman Moore, History of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, 1918, 2 vols., 
ii :30. 


[191] 


192 JOHN SHIRLEY 


is already recognized, reduced although it be by his failings. For Chaucer’s work, 
he is our sole or main authority for including in the canon Anelida, Mars, Venus, 
Pity, Stedfastnesse, Truth, and the Words to Adam; of the last he has pre- 
served the only copy. For Lydgate, also, Shirley did yeoman service ; in the Trin- 
ity College MS above mentioned exists the only known set of Lydgate’s clumsy 
but important Mummings, long supposed lost; and various traces of Lydgate’s 
personal connection with Humphrey of Gloucester are preserved by Shirley, or 
his copyists, alone. His tone when speaking of the monk is friendly, even fa- 
miliar; and he evidently had especial opportunities of obtaining Lydgate’s work. 
For a piece of prose-translation which Shirley asserts to be Lydgate’s, see p. 
101 here. 

The codices written by Shirley himself are nearly all commonplace-books, or 
collections of shorter works and scraps; they are now Brit. Mus. Adds. 16165, 
Bodl. Ashmole 59, and Trinity College Cambridge R 3,20; also an imperfect 
volume at Sion College, London, part of the volume Harvard University 530 F, 
and a few leaves each of Brit. Mus. Harley 78 and of the Earl of Ellesmere’s MS 
26 A 13, now in the Huntington Library, California. The first-named has been de- 
scribed by me in MLNotes 19:35-38 and in Mod. Phil. 1:331; the Ashmole has 
been described by me in Anglia 30 :320-48 ; the Trinity College MS by me in Anglia 
22 :364-374; the Harvard volume by F. N. Robinson in Harvard Studies, vol. 
v. For the Sion College MS see my Chaucer Manual, p. 333; and on the general 
subject of the Shirley volumes see Brusendorff, pp. 207-236. In MLNotes 36 :184 
I queried if the imperfect Sion College MS could be the missing part of the 
Trinity College volume. 

Codices derived in part at least from Shirley are Brit. Mus. Adds. 5467, 
Harley 2251, Adds. 34360, and Harley 7333; also John Stow’s MS Brit. Mus. 
Adds. 29729, in which he transcribes a mass of material from the Trinity College 
volume, at that time his property. The first-named MS has been discussed by 
Gaertner as above, the next two by me in Anglia 28:1-28, Harley 7333 briefly by 
Gaertner op. cit. p. 19, more at length in my Chaucer Manual, pp. 176-77. The 
originals of Adds. 5467 and Harley 7333 are unknown to us, but a number of 
the poems in Harley 2251 and Adds. 34360 are in the Trinity College MS, with 
identical headings. There has as yet been no investigation to determine how far 
the copyists of Shirley are influenced by his shortcomings. Invaluable although 
Shirley’s work is historically and archaeologically, it is textually most disappoint- 
ing. The disorganization and corruption which he inflicts upon a text of Chaucer 
are often painful to witness. He had no feeling for rhythm, and either because 
of the fall of inflexional -e or because of his own insensitiveness, he did not per- 
ceive the speech-flow of Chaucer. The muddled conditions and omitted passages 
of Ashmole 59 may be due in part to Shirley’s great age when that volume was 
compiled ; but everywhere in his work the lines are jarring in ways which we may 
partly explain, but cannot reform. All the volumes in his own hand are charac- 
terized by this text-maltreatment, by his script, by his “gossiping” headings, by 
his orthography, and often by his device. 

On the title-pages of Ashmole 59 and on a leaf of the former Ellesmere MS 
26 A 13 is a device, resembling a composite letter, surmounted by a crown and 
flanked on the one side by the words “ma ioye’’, on the other side by the word 
“Shirley. ” This appears ‘also on two MSS owned but not written by Shirley, 
both in French; one is a copy of Vegetius on the art of chivalry, in de Meun’s 


TWO TABLES OF CONTENTS 193 


translation, and is in the British Museum as Royal 20 B xv; the other is a French 
poem on Edward the Black Prince, formerly in Lord Mostyn’s collection and 
after his sale presented (1921) to the present Prince of Wales. This latter volume 
is described by Sir Israel Gollancz in a small privately printed brochure, to which 
is prefixed a full-size photograph of Shirley’s device. A very small drawing of the 
device is in the British Museum catalogue of the Royal MSS, with the description 
of the codex above mentioned ; the device is there termed a “sort of monogram”, 
but Gollancz affirms positively that it is an A. The letter of the Royal MS is 
identical with that of the former Ellesmere MS, I am informed by the Keeper of 
MSS in the Huntington Library; and it is identical with that of the Ashmole. 
The first leaves of the Trinity College MS are missing, possibly with the device; 
and the MS Adds. 16165 carries a simplified mark, the word Shirley with ma ioye 
above it, and between them a smallish ordinary a as in his usual script, uncrowned. 
I have previously suggested that this “device” may be a composite letter, represent- 
ing perhaps MARIA or AMOR, and in the nature of an invocation or formula 
at beginning, like, e.g., the rubric “Assit principio sancta maria meo” on many 
MSS, such as Bodl. Laud 683 or those of the Bury Library as described by Dr. 
James. Shirley does indeed occasionally use this composite letter where an A is 
to be expected; but the difference between his device in Adds. 16165 and in the 
French MSS above mentioned or in Ashmole 59 may be one of date. The devices 
of the early printers may be compared. 

Shirley’s script is reproduced in the Chaucer Society Autotypes from the 
Adds. MS and from the Sion College MS; in Harvard Studies v from the MS 
Harvard 530 F; in Brusendorff to face p. 280, from MS Brit. Mus. Adds. 16165. 

Besides Shirley’s translations and copies there remain some bits of original 
verse by him :—a rimed table of contents in his autograph, here printed; a similar 
table existing only in Stow’s copy of it, also here printed; a single stanza used 
as a sort of bookplate in MS Ashmole 59, and printed thence in Reliq. Antiq. 
i1:163, in Anglia 30: 329, in Gaertner’s diss. as cited, p. 23 footnote, and by Brusen- 
dorff, p. 460; the same stanza is in the Trinity College MS, and is printed thence 
in James’ catalogue of the MSS, ii:81. Shirley perhaps also composed a sort of 
epitome of Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, in nine eight-line stanzas, which 
is printed by the Chaucer Society, Odd Texts, appendix, p. vi, and by Gaertner, 
op. cit., p. 66, from the Ashmole volume. The two versified Tables of Contents 
here given are printed by Brusendorff, pp. 453-460; that in MS Adds. 16165 is 
printed by Gaertner, pp. 63-66. None of these bits has any literary value, and I 
include these Tables here mainly as illustration of the “publishing conditions” of the 
period and as parallel to the dialogue between Robert Copland and young Nevill, 
printed below pp. 287 ff. On Shirley see Brusendorff, pp. 453 ff. 

_ More than a hundred years later than Shirley, the London tailor and antiquary 
John Stow, who died in 1605, owned and annotated a number of Shirley, Shirleyan, 
and other MSS. No list of Stow’s known library has yet been compiled, but we 
find his memoranda, e.g., in Bodl. Fairfax 16, in Shirley’s MS Trin. Coll. R 3,20 
and in the MS preserved ibid. as R 3,21, in Brit. Mus. Adds. 34360, and in a 
former Huth MS now Huntington 144, not to mention transcripts in Stow’s own 
hand in Stowe 952, ?Adds. 29729, Harley 542, etc., etc. In Stow’s Survey as ed. 
by Kingsford, ii: 24, he says of Shirley.—‘“This Gentleman, a great traueller in 
diuers countries, amongest other his labours, painefully collected the workes of 
Geffrey Chaucer, Iohn Lidgate, and other learned writers, which workes hee wrote 


194 JOHN SHIRLEY 


in sundry volumes to remayne for posterity. I haue seene them, and partly do 
possesse them.” 

It is possible that between 1598, when Stow wrote this, and 1558 when he com- 
piled his MS Adds. 29729, he had come into possession of the Trinity MS R 3, 20, 
the Shirley volume from which he probably copied at the earlier date. His book 
29729 is, he says, made up not only from “the boke of John Sherley”’, but from 
“master Blomfields boke”, “master Hanlays booke”, “master Philyppes boke”, and 
“master Stantons boke’. (See description of the MS by Sieper in his EETS edi- 
tion of Lydgate’s Reson and Sensuality, introduction). At the end of his set of 
Shirley extracts Stow copies the second of the versified Tables of Contents here 
printed, a table no longer in the Trinity MS because of its loss of quires at the 
beginning ; and he follows it with “Here endeth ye werkes of John lidgat which 
John Stow hath caused to be coppyed out of an owld booke som tyme wrytten 
by John Sherleye as is aboue made mencyon / John Sherley wrat in ye tyme of 
John lydgate in his lyffe tyme”. 

Stow was an author as well as a collector. The two most notable works of 
his busy life are the Chaucer edition of 1561 and the topographical Survey of 
London published in 1598. He also drew up a list of Lydgate’s works for the 
Speght Chaucer of 1598. The first-named piece of work has made Stow suspect 
with modern students so far as matters literary are concerned; for it foisted upon 
Chaucer many poems which are obviously not his, and which it has cost a long 
struggle to remove from the Chaucer-canon. See Skeat, Oxford Chaucer i:31 ff. 
Stow’s list of Lydgate’s works is discussed by MacCracken in his EETS ed. of 
Lydgate’s Minor Poems, with the conclusion that there, as in his Chaucer-ascrip- 
tions, Stow “has no great claim to credit”. But Stow’s evidence as an antiquary 
is another matter; and however we may censure and doubt his testimony or 
Shirley’s on textual points, we owe deeply to both for their interested zeal as 
transcribers. 

Stow’s script may ' be seen in photographs of nine pages of Brit. Mus. Adds. 
29729, preserved in the library of Harvard University, with other photographs, as 
“Poems and Ballads: photographs of selected folios of Lydgate’s MSS in the 
British Museum.” 


[MS Brit. Mus. Adds. 16165, fol. 2a] 
pE PROLOGE OF PE KALUNDARE OF PIS LITTLE BOOKE 
4 If bat you list / for to entende / 
Of pis booke / to here legende / 


Boicius in prose 


Of Nichodeme Suche as is / right vertuous / 

be maistre of be game Of maner of mirthe nought vicious / 
pe dreme for lovers As wryten haue / pees olde clerkes / 
be Ruyle of preestis Pat beon appreued / in aile hir werkis / 
be compleynt of a lover By oure eldres / here to fore 

be compleynt of anelida Remembraunce / ellys were forlore / 
Tiem «it ober hitel balades Wher fore / dere sirs / I you beseche 


complaintes & roundelles Pat ye disdeyne not / with my speche / 10 


ffor affter be symplesse / of my witt / 
So as feblesse / wolde suffice hit / 

Pis litell booke / with myn hande / 
wryten I haue / ye shul vnderstande / 
And sought be copie / in many a place / 
To haue be more thank / of youre grace / 


PWO TABLES OF CONTENTS: I 195 


§ And doon hit bynde / In pis volume / 
Pat bobe be gret / and be comune / 
May per on looke / and eke hit reede 
Peyres beo be thanke / and be meede 20 
Pat first hit studyed / and owt founde 
Nowe beon pey dolven / deep in be grounde / 
Beseche I god / he gyf hem grace / 
In hevens blisse / to haue a place / 
4 And for to put hit / in youre mynde / 
first pus by ordre / shul ye fynde / 
Of Boece / be hole translacyoun / 
And Phylosofyes / consolacyoun / 
Laboured by Geffrey Chaucier 
Whiche in oure wolgare / hade neuer his 
pere / 30 
Of eloquencyale retorryke / 
In Englisshe / was neuer noon him lyke / 
Gyff him be prys and seype ber hoo / 
For neuer knewe ye / suche na moo / 
{{ Pe passyoun panne / of Nichodeme / 
fful wel translated shul ye seen / 
Pe whiche of Berkeley / lord Thomas 
Whome god assoyle / for his grace / 
Lete oute of latyn / hit translate / 
By Johan Trevysa / pat hit made 40 
A maystre in Theologye / 
Appreued clerk / for be maystrye / 
Thankepbe pe lord / and pe Clerk / 
Pat caused first / bat holy werk / 
{| Panne filowebe nexst / as in wryting / 
Pe notablest story of huntyng 
Pat euer was made / to fore pis day 
Redebe and proue hit by assaye 
Maystre of be game / men hit calle 
I prey to god feyre mot him falle 50 
Duk of york / be last Edwarde 
Pat dyed in be vauntwarde 
Of pe bataylle In Picardye , 
At Agincourt / pis is no lye / 
ffor as of huntyng / here to fore 
Was neuer taught so truwe lore 
To alle bat beon gentyl of kynde / 
Beon bounde / to haue his soule in mynde 
And namelych / of bis oure regyoun 
Whiche was cleped Albyoun / 60 
Pat nowe is called Engeland / 
{ Panne shul ye wit / and vnderstand / 
Of an Abstract made in latyne / 
Al in proose / eke lyne by lyne / 
Grounded vpon holy writte / 
Regula sacerdotalis / men clepen hit / 
God helpe so / as bat I not / 
Who first hit made / ne hit wrot / 
Per fore noon Auctour / I allegge / 


196 


JOHN SHIRLEY 


Drynkebe to my lady / and I hir plegge / 70 
Lest some folk wolde / me mysse construwe / 
Panne and ye wol be wryting suwe / 
{ Shul ye fynde wryten / of a knyght 
Pat serued his soueraine / lady bright / 
As done bees louers amerous / 
Whos lyff / is offt seen parillous / 
Askebe of hem / pat haue hit vsed 
A dieux Joenesse I am refused 
Whos complaynt is al in balade 
Pat daun Johan of Bury made / 80 
Lydegate pe Munk clobed in blacke 
In his makyng / per is no lacke / 
And thankebe / daun Johan for his peyne / 
Pat to plese gentyles / is right feyne / 
Bobe with his laboure / and his goode / 
God wolde of nobles / he hade ful his hoode / 


q And ober balades moo ber beon / 
Right godely / looke and ye may seen 
And whane ye haue pis booke ouerlooked / 
Pe right lynes / with be crooked / 90 
And pe sentence / vnderstonden / 
With Inne youre mynde hit fast ebounden 
Thankepe pauctoures pat pbeos storyes 
{ Renoueld haue / to youre memoryes / 
And be wryter / for his distresse 
Whiche besechibe / youre gentylnesse 
Pat ye sende pis booke ageyne 
Hoome to Shirley / pat is right feyne 
If hit hape beon / to yowe plesaunce / 
4 As in be reedyng / of be romaunce / 100 
And alle pat beon / in bis companye 
God sende hem Joye / of hir ladye 
And euery womman of hir loue 
Prey I to god pat sittebe aboue / 


Explicit 


[Brit. Mus. Adds. 29729, fol. 177 b] 
[John Stow’s MS] 


KALUNDARE OF JOHN SHIRLEY WHICH HE SET IN Y¥ BEGINNINGE OF HIS BOOKE 


O ye my lordes whan ye be holde 

this boke or list it to vnfould 

or ye y® leues turne to rede 

looke this calender and then proced 

for ther is titled compendyously 5 
all y® storyes hole by and by 

eche after other in ther chapytles 

as yt sheweth pleyne / by ther tytles 

and for I haue but shorte space 

i must y® lyttler ouer pase 10 


In margin by II:10 is: 1. John Shirley. 


besechynge / you be not to wroth 

ffor as I could / wt outen coth 

and as my febles would suffyse 

in my rude vplandishe wise 

thus haue I them in ordre sete 15 
yt fere were eft / now here ben mette 

I meane y® copyes / ne douteth noughte 
In sondry place / haue I them soughte 
on this hallfe / and beyonde y¢ see 

as fortune hathe them brought to me 20 
first y© humayne / pilgrymage 


TWO TABLES OF CONTENTS: II 197 


sayd all by proose in fayre langage 

and many a roundell and balade 

whiche y® munke of bury hath made 

and sayd them wt hys sugred mouthe 25 

in straunge metres so vnkouthe 

of morall mater / and holynesse 

of salmes / and of ympnes expresse 

of loue and lawe / and of pleyinges 

of lordes of ladyes of qwenes of 
kynges 30 

his rymyng / is so moralysed 

that hym aught well / be solempnysed 

of all oure engelishe / nacion 

for his famus / translacyon 

Of this booke and of other mo 35 

suche as he is haue we no mo 

yet for all his much konnynge 

which were gret / tresore to a kynge 

I meane this lidgate / munke dame John 

his nobles bene spent / I leue ychon 40 

and eke his shylinges nyghe by 

his thred bare coule / woll not ly 

ellas ye lordis / why nill ye se 

and reward his pouerte 

y® liff also of sainte margarete 45 

yt holy virgine so fayre and swete 

dame John hath it to translate 

at y® request now but late 

of my lady of huntyngeton 

which here fast by / nere to london 50 

lythe entered at sainte Kateryn 

y* contesse of y© marche in hur tyme 

almightye god so graunte hur grace 

In heuen blysse to haue a place 

ther bene also deuocyons 55 

and dyuers medytacions 

sayde bothe by lordes and by clerkes 

which bene accostomed / to suche werkes 

In french in engelishe and latine 

yt I haue wryt in this margyn 60 

rede and persayue it by assaye 

beseche I god pt to your paye 


In_ margin by lines 24, 36, are: i. dame John 
lidgate, 1. dame John. 


and to your plesaunce it mought be 

whan yt ye rede ther on or se 

ffor than my trauayle is welle sett 65 

I aske of you no other dett 

bot wher defaute is or y® blame 

yt it nenpayr y® auctors name 

as for fayllinge of y® scripture 

of y* meter / or ortografyure 70 

wouch saue it to correcte 

elles of y® defaute am I suspecte 

yt thorugh your supportacion 

yow list to make correccion 

sith to such craffte I am not vsed 75 

of your grac hath me excused 

So whan ye had thos storyes rede 

be ye fastyng or be ye fede 

as yt I dare I you beseche 

yt ye disdayne not wt my speche 80 

but sendeth this boke to me agayne 

shirley I meane which is right fayne 

if ye ther of haue had plesaunce 

as in y® weddinge of y® romance 

than am I glad by god onlyue 85 

as I were lord of tounes fyue 

and so at your commaundement 

It shall bene eft when you list send 

wt all y® saruice yt I can 

as he yt is your oune man 90 

and all yt in this company 

ben knight squyer or lady 

or other estat what euer they be 

y® god of loue / wher so yt he ....e 

be in heauen or here in yearth 95 

he brynge them to the heuen forthe 

if they in loue be founden true 

wt stedfast hert and nought renew 

nether in ernest nor in game 

but kepe ther worshipe and ther name 100 

he send them lord such guerdonynge 

as they deserue in ther menynge 

be hit female be it male 

now seche and rede some other talle 
Explicit 


A REPROOF TO LYDGATE 


This poem exists, so far as is yet known, only in the volume from which it 
is here printed. In that manuscript it appears as one of a group of short courtly 
love-poems, separately headed in some cases as Balade, Compleynt, etc. Without 
title itself, this poem is immediately preceded by a “‘Compleynt” of the unpitied but 
loyal lover, and immediately followed by a sixteen-stanza “Parlement” of Cupid 
which is the last poem of the group. There is no mark of authorship to these 
poems in the manuscript; but H. N. MacCracken, publishing them as below, sug- 
gested the Earl of Suffolk (died 1450), and also suggested Suffolk as translator of 
the French poems by Charles d’ Orléans, a number of which are printed in this 
volume (pp. 214 ff.). 

That Suffolk dabbled in authorship we know from short French poems of 
his, preserved by John Shirley and also published by MacCracken, ibid. The two 
main reasons for binding his name upon this English collection appear to be, first, 
his relations with Orléans, whose gaoler he was for a part of the duke’s captivity in 
England, and whom he afterward visited in France ; and, secondly, the fact that 
one of the poems of this Fairfax series exists in the most important of the French 
volumes of Orléans’ verse, a manuscript argued to be of his own compilation and 
partly in his own hand. MacCracken would regard the presence of a ?Suffolk- 
poem in such an album, along with poems by the duke’s French circle, as a natural 
outcome of the close connection between Suffolk and Orléans; he therefore sug- 
gests that this English poem just mentioned (printed p. 222 here) is by Suffolk, 
and deduces thence Suffolk’s authorship of the rest of the group as copied in Fair- 
fax, including of course this present text. 

The theory is interesting but inconclusive. The French savant Champion’s 
suggestion of Alice countess of Suffolk as the “inamorata” and English instructor 
of the captive Orléans was interesting and not improbable; but the discovery of 
Anne Molins’ name, inserted acrostic-wise, in one of Orléans’ attempts at an 
English poem (see p. 222 here) puts a new face on the matter. And other facts 
may appear which will throw light on this group of courtly verses, especially on 
the tone here assumed toward Lydgate, who is both invoked as aid and censured 
for his language about women. The particular Lydgate- passages in the author’s 
mind may be those of the Fall of Princes; for in the commonplace-book Harley 
2251, where are copied a mass of ‘ “tragedies” from the Fall, the scribe has written 
indignant marginal comments on the aspersions against women contained in the 
tragedies of Hercules and of Samson. These notes, foll. 127-43 of the codex, are: 
“Ye be shent. Ye leese your thank. So shul ye be pese. Holdith your pees. Ye 
haue no cause to say so. Ye wil be shent. Be pees I bidde you. Ye haue no 
cause to say so. Late hem compleyne that neode have. I pray yow to be pees. 
Be my trowth ye wilbe shent. Be pees or I wil rende this leef out of your booke. 
There is no good womman that wilbe wroth ne take no quarell agenst this booke 
as I suppose.”—etc. See Brusendorff, pp. 461-465. 

This last comment is perhaps suggested by Lydgate’s own text, Fall of 
Princes i: 6702-4; and when we note the characteristic Shirley-spelling of neode 
in these marginalia, we may wonder if they and their text were not copied from 
one of Shirley’s volumes, as is much of this particular Harley-manuscript. It 


[ 198 ] 





A REPROOF TO LYDGATE 199 


may be a corroboration to note that in Shirley’s own copy of Lydgate’s mummings 
(printed as below) there is found a jesting query by him against one of Lydgate’s 
sly digs at women in the text. Lydgate says:—“I mene it bus, bat worde and 
werke were oon; It is no wonder, for wymmen soo beon echoon.” And Shirley ex- 
claims, in the margin: “A daun Iohan, est y vray?” 

It is, however, not certain that the Fall of Princes passages are meant; and 
regarding authorship there is only conjecture as yet. That the poem must date 
before Lydgate’s death in 1448-9 is clear. 

Although the larger half is devoted to Lydgate, the opening stanzas allude, 
apparently, to “a strife of the Flower and the Leaf” in which our writer has 
chosen the Flower. This “sentimental strife” of two Orders is mentioned in Chau- 
cer’s prologue to the Legend of Good Women, in various short poems by Chaucer’s 
French contemporary Eustache Deschamps, perhaps in Gower’s Confessio Amantis 
viii: 2462 ff., and clearly in Charles d’Orléans’ verse a generation later. Students 
have generally referred this “strife” to the age of Chaucer and Deschamps; but 
its fullest literary statement is in the anonymous “Flower and Leaf”, a poem 
probably of the latter fifteenth century. Were we to take these fictions at their 
face value, we should infer that there existed, in France at least, two courtly “Or- 
ders”, one vowing allegiance to the beauty of the Flower, the other making the 
Leaf the symbol of constancy and service. Such an inference passes well with 
what we know of the “Cour Amoureuse” of Charles the Sixth, the association of 
French chivalry and French letters in protest against the encroachment of the 
bourgeois spirit. That association, broken by the fall of so many of its members 
at Agincourt and by the long following war with England, was short-lived; but 
its code, or the code of a “sentimental strife”, lingers in a few pieces of Transition 
verse. 

SELECT REFERENCE LIST VII 

MacCracken, “An English Friend of Charles of Orléans,” PMLA 26:142 ff. See p. 
218 here for comment on this paper. 

Shirley, see p. 191 here. 

Champion, “A propos de Charles d’Orléans,” Romania 49 :580-4. 

Hammond, E. P., “Charles of Orléans and Anne Molyneux,”’ ModPhil 22:215-16. 

Lydgate’s mummings are printed, all but the Mumming at Hertford, by Brotanek as 
appendix to his Englische Maskenspiele, 1902. The Hertford mumming is 
printed by me, Anglia 22:364; repr. Neilson and Webster, p. 223. 

On Harley 2251 see my Chaucer Manual, p. 329; earlier and fuller material in Anglia 
Qe: 

The Flower and the Leaf is ed. Skeat in Chaucerian and Other Pieces. See my Chau- 
cer-Manual, p. 423. See G. L. Marsh, Sources and Analogues of the Flower 
and the Leaf, Chicago diss., 1906 and ModPhil iv. 

On the Cour Amoureuse see Alma, LeDuc in Romanic Review 8:145,290, and Piaget in 
Romania 31 :597. 


200 ANONYMOUS 


[MS Bodl. Fairfax 16, foll. 325-327] 


Myn hert ys set and all myn hole entent 

To serue this flour in my most humble 
wyse 

As faythfully as can be thought or ment 

Wyth out feynyng or slouthe in my 
seruyse 

ffor wytt the wele yt ys a paradyse 

To se this flour when yt bygyn to sprede 

Wyth colours fressh ennewyd white and 
rede 


2 
And for the fayth I owe vn to thys 
flour 
I must of reson do my obseruaunce 
To flours all bothe now and euery our 10 
Syth fortune lyst that yt shuld be my 
chaunce 
If that I couthe do seruyse or plesaunce 
Thus am I set and shall be tyll I sterue 
And for o flour all othyr for (to) serue 


3 
So wolde god that my symple connyng 
Ware sufficiaunt this goodly flour to 
prayse 
ffor as to me ys non so ryche a thyng 
That able were this flour to countirpayse 
O noble chaucer passyd ben thy dayse 
Off poetrye ynamyd worthyest 20 
And of makyng in alle othir days the 
best 


4 

Now thou art go / thyn helpe I may not 
haue 

Wherfor to god I pray ryght specially 

Syth thou art dede and buryde in thy 
graue 

That on thy sowle hym lyste to haue 
mercy 

And to the monke of bury now speke I 

ffor thy connyng ys syche and eke thy 
grace 

After chaucer to occupye his place 


5 
Besechyng the my penne enlumyne 
This flour to prayse as I before haue 
ment 30 


There is no heading to the poem in the MS; it is 
separated from that preceding by a space 
of three lines and a horizontal bar. In the 
perhaps contemporary table of contents at 
the front of the Fairfax MS, this poem 
is described as “‘How he louer ys sett to 
serve the floure.””’ The MS is described 
in my Chaucer Manual, pp. 333 ff.; see 
also Notes below, p. 461. 


And of these lettyrs let thy colours shyne 
This byll to forthir after myn entent 
ffor glad am I that fortune lyst assent 
So to ordeyn that yt shuld be myn vre 
The flours to chese as by myn aventure 


6 
Wher as ye say that loue ys but dotage 
Of verey reson that may not be trew 
ffor euery man that hath a good corage 
Must louer be thys wold I that ye knew 
Who louyth wele all vertu will hym 


sew 40 
Wherfor I rede and counsail yow ex- 
presse 
As for thys mater take non heuynesse 
7 
These clerkys wyse ye say were brought 
full lowe 


And mad full tame for alle thair sotelte 

Now am I glad yt shall ryght wele be 
know 

That loue ys of so grete autoryte 

Wherfor I lat yow wyt as semeth me 

It is your part in euery maner wyse 

Of trew louers to forther the seruyse 


8 
And of women ye say ryght as ye 
lyst 50 
That trouth in hem may but awhile en- 
dure 
And counsail eke that men shuld hem not 
tryst 


And how they be vnstedfast of nature 

What causeth this for euery creature 

That ys gylty and knowyth thaym self 
coulpable 

Demyth alle othir thair case semblable 


9 
And be your bokys I put case that ye 
knewe 
Mych of this mater which that ye haue 
meuyd 
Yit god defende that euery thing were 


trew 
That clerkes wryte for then myght thys 
be preuyd 60 


That ye haue sayd which wyll not be 
byleuyd 

I late yow wyt for trysteth verely 

In your conseyt yt is an eresy 


A REPROOF TO LYDGATE 201 


10 
A fye for schame O thou envyous man 
Thynk whens thou came and whider to 
repayr 
Hastow not sayd eke that these women 
can 
Laugh and loue nat parde yt is not fair 
Thy corupt speche enfectyth alle the air 
Knoke on thy brest repent now and euer 
Ayen therwyth and say thou saydyst yt 
neuer 70 
11 
Thynk fully this and hold yt for no fable 
That fayth in women hath his dwellyng 
place 
ffor out of her cam nought that was 
vnable 


Saf man that can not well say in no place 
O thou vnhappy man go hyde thy face 
The court ys set thy falshed is tryed 
Wythdraw I rede for now thou art as- 


pyed 
12 


If thou be wyse yit do this after me 

Be not to hasty com not in presence 

Lat thyn attournay sew and speke for 
the 80 

Loke yf he can escuse thy necglygence 

And forther more yit must thou recom- 
pence 

ffor alle that euer thou hast sayde byfore 

Haue mynde of this for now I wryte no 
more 


PALLADIUS ON HUSBANDRY 
Tue PROLOGUE AND SOME LINKING STANZAS 


This straightforward translation of an unliterary Latin treatise, De re rustica, 
written in the fourth century by Palladius Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus, in prose, 
has great interest for students of fifteenth-century English verse. Its translator 
is unnamed and unknown; in his prologue he tells us that he is at the time of writ- 
ing under the protection of Humphrey duke of Gloucester, after being in some 
way misused by an enemy. He seems to have been set to work by Humphrey at 
this task, and he declares that the duke has taught him ‘“‘metring”, and is the watch- 
ful critic of the text as he produces it. The metrical management here is notice- 
ably competent and assured, at the very time when Lydgate, for instance, was 
producing his mechanical and monotonous translation of the Fall of Princes, also 
done for Gloucester. There is here a clarity of intention, a sureness of phrasing, 
a manipulation of rhythm, and a variety in breath-length, which Lydgate has not. 
This unknown workman has also animation in his personal touches, and interests 
us by his attempts at complex medial rime in his prologues ; but the general rhyth- 
mical handling is especially important for students of the Transition. Sharp twists 
of syntax and somewhat strained uses of words occur in the prologue because of 
the elaborate “rhetorical color”, the use of medial rime and of stanza-linking by 
echo. Such devices had been employed by Chaucer in parts of his Anelida; and 
see pp. 208, 211 here for their appearance in the Lover’s Mass. This man moves 
less gracefully, but he controls his material. 

Two manuscripts of the poem have been edited. In 1873 and 1879 the Col- 
chester Castle MS, now Add. A 369 of the Bodleian at Oxford, was printed for 
the Early English Text Society by Barton Lodge. He wrongly assigned the codex 
to ca.1420; its text is imperfect at beginning and close, and less valuable than 
that of the MS owned by Earl Fitzwilliam and preserved at Wentworth Wode- 
house. This latter was edited by Mark H. Liddell, Berlin, 1896, vol. i, text; notes, 
and discussion of the relation of the English to the Latin, have not appeared. The 
Fitzwilliam MS was apparently transcribed from the duke’s own copy, as it bears 
his arms in the capital letter of book i; its text is complete and very carefully writ- 
ten, with the interesting prologue lacking in the Colchester-Bodley copy. A photo- 
graphic reproduction of it exists in the Bodleian Library, marked Eng. poet. d. 
27, and from this my extracts are made. According to Vickers’ life of Gloucester, 
pp. 434-5, the Fitzwilliam MS is not now known to exist at Wentworth Wode- 
house. There is another MS, Hunterian T, 5,6, at Glasgow, according to Archiv 
100:156; it is imperfect, but is textually close to the Fitzwilliam. 

The work may be dated with some exactitude from allusions in the prologue. 
Gloucester’s gifts of books to the University of Oxford, so enthusiastically lauded 
here, were in 1439 and 1443; in the second list! we find a copy of the Latin of 
Palladius, possibly the very book used by this translator. The prologue also speaks, 
stanza 8, of Gloucester’s ‘annoying’ Orléans; and this must refer to the sharp 


1See Anstey, Munimenta Academica, 1868. See pp. 758-772 for list of books given by 
Gloucester to Oxford. 


[ 202 ] 


PALLADIUS ON HUSBANDRY 203 


controversy between the Beaufort party and Gloucester regarding the liberation of 
Charles duke of Orléans, a controversy terminated, over Gloucester’s protest, by 
the departure of the duke in November, 1440. The donation to Oxford here men- 
tioned must accordingly be that of November, 1439, and the translation must be- 
long in 1440. 

It might be argued, from the tone of this work, of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, 
and of Hoccleve in his Dialogue, toward Gloucester, that the Palladius-translator 
was closely associated with the duke, that Lydgate saw him occasionally, and that 
Hoccleve saw him scarcely at all. The difference is more than one of tone; the 
emphasis of this man and of Lydgate (stanzas 58, 59 of the Fall of Princes prol.) 
on Gloucester’s activity against heretics may indeed be due to the two writers’ 
connection with the Church, but as years had elapsed since the executions of Sharp 
and of Wawe (line 51 below) it is also possible that the duke wished his piety 
commemorated, and that Hoccleve did not know of this wish. Our translator is, 
moreover, at this time residing, it would seem, in one of Gloucester’s manors, 
perhaps that of “Plesaunce” at Greenwich, the duke’s most famous abode; and 
in stanza 13 he mentions members of the household. Perhaps it was this very 
nearness to the powerful patron which urged him to a fulsomeness of praise 
greater even than Lydgate’s, and much in excess of Hoccleve’s. Lydgate is lavish, 
but with conventional formulae and comparisons; this man, although he has more 
of actual fact than Lydgate gives us, runs occasionally into hyperbole—see note on 
line 29 below—of which Lydgate would not be capable. But here again, as 
remarked in the note on line 51, the fact of Gloucester’s waning political power 
may have urged his supporters to greater emphasis on his ability. 

The work runs to nearly 6700 lines, mainly in rime royal, although the prologue 
and the connective-stanzas between books are of eight lines. The author thus 
uses a slightly different form when speaking in his own person; compare the use 
of refrain, occasionally of eight-line stanzas, in the envoys added by Lydgate, at 
Gloucester’s command, to the Fall of Princes translation. The elaborate rime- 
echo of the prologue has some small reflection in the body of the work, where each 
book opens with the closing phrase of the book preceding, or rather of the in- 
serted connective. Of these books the Palladius has thirteen, one for each month 
of the year and one introductory. 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST VIII 


Struever, C., Die mittelenglische Uebersetzung des Palladius: ihr Verhaltnis zur Quelle 
und ihre Sprache. Gottingen diss., pubd. Halle, 1887, pp. 82. (This is based on 
the EETS edition, the inadequacies of which Liddell has shown; the MS used 
for that ed. also lacks the prologue. ) 

Liddell’s collations of the EETS text with the Colchester-Bodley MS, correcting its 
many errors, are pubd. EETS 1896, and in his own ed. as above. 

See: “The Nine-Syllabled Pentameter Line in Some Post-Chaucerian Manu- 
scripts,’ by Eleanor P. Hammond, ModPhilol. 23:129-152, sect. 1v of paper. 


[Bodl. Eng. poet. d. 27, photogr. from MS Fitzwilliam] 


Agriculture as in nature and art List to prouide and duc H(umfrid)e his 
Tendure of creature AlCreatour part 
————_— _. ’ z ; é GRI CUL TU RE AS IN NA TU RE AND ART. 
Verse 1 is written with 8-line gilt capital A, to the These smaller capitals are white or yellow 
right of which appears, in a narrow vertical on lake or blue ground. 
column, the remainder of the first line cut Lines 3, 4, 8, 27 are blotted where brackets ap- 


up into two- and three-letter pieces, viz.:— pear in text above. 


204 ANONYMOUS 


Diuide of either side a(dd)ynge honour 
So high that we of princis se the flour 5 
Hym be So sende he me sense and science 
Of my balade away to rade errour 

Pallade and do t(o gl)ade his excellence 


2 
His excellence O trine and oon eterne 
Almyghty lord Alsapyent al good Io 
Thy Prouidence as sterismon and sterne 
Emforth this word now refluent now 
flood 
Now in concord now violent and wood 
By lif present so list extende in grace 
That of his woord his werk entent or 
mood 15 
Noon inuident may reprehende an ace 


3 
An ace apoynt y vndirstonde is werk 
Disioynt mys take on honde of his sup- 
port 
Wroght euer kynge or prince or knyght 
or clerk 
A thynge other then right by his con- 


fort 20 
Though opon fame ha maad thus pleyn 
report 


Yit lame is she tatteyn onto the dede 

Of myghtiest to hym is glad resort 

Of meest and leest is had his loue and 
drede 

4 

His loue and drede in brestis sprede his 
wit 25 

And grace in sondri place is so fecounde 

That sapienc(e in) his prudence is knyt 

As seyn in trewthis pleyn that list 
abounde 

In myn entent the Sapient secounde 

Is fonde into euery londe whos fame is 
born 30 

And worthy straunge her londis chaunge 
& founde 

Expresse of his prowess at eye aforn 


5 
At eye aforn is hym right here in sight 
To here and noon was lorn of their 
labour 
Whos vertu seyn and doon disport 


aright 35 
Resort han summe ayeyn wt gret hon- 
our 
And yiftis grete and summe vnder this 
flour 


Are heer and thyngis trete of high em- 
prise 

ffor lif present for lif future vche hour 

His cure and iust entent who kan com- 


prise 40 
6 
Who kan comprise in werkis wise in 
right 


In sadde avise as forto wise a londe 

The duc periure who made assure in 
flight 

Calise endure who made and sure in 
honde 

The kyngis right who made vpright to 
stonde 45 

Who hath insight to stynte vnright 
aduerse 

Who hath be prest the chirche in rest to 
londe 

As trewthe is best let feithfullest re- 
herce 


Let feithfullest reherce y treste hym 
beste 

Yf heretike ought kouthe pike him fro 50 

Yf Sharp or Wawe hadde of the lawe 
a feste 

Yf right was fond in al this londe unto 

Hit to gouerne he doon the sterne vnto 

Of euery poynt a kyng ennoynt of bothe 

Englond and ffraunce hath conysaunce 
also 55 

Nis ther noo lord that nil record hem 
sothe 


8 
Record hem sothe hit self the dede ap- 
perith 
Wul he for bothe alyue and dede es- 
ploye 


To saue vs here and hem in ffraunce hit 
cherith 

His wit to here and Orliaunce ennoye 60 

Wel myght a kynge of suche a flour 
enioye 

To seen hit sprynge in fyn odour & huys 

Strenght & sauour hym oueral to ioy 

In whos fauour science and al vertu is 


9 
Uertu is fonde if goldon Sapience 65 
Haue intellect and consel ffortitude 
If pite stonde enaured wt science 
That hem connect the Lordis drede en- 
clude 
Man thus confect is voide of dedis rude 


PALLADIUS ON HUSBANDRY 205 


This kyngis dere vncul & sone and 
brother 70 
Hath god prouect His werkis to conclude 
His werkis here or where is suche an- 
other 
10 


Another felyng so the philosophre 

In bokis natural as is phisic 

Metaphisic also thus prompt to profre 75 
Vche art quadriuial and hath practic 
With theoric moral as is Ethic 

Politic monastic yconomye 

In gramer ground of al growyng logic 
ffor fruyt and rethoric to florifie 80 


i 


To florifie in artificial 

Science and al thorgh se philosophie 

Beth thyngis hie And yiftis natural 

Hit is not smal to haue as memorie 

What thynge engyne vpfynde or reson 
trie 85 

And iustifie in tresor to reclyne 

Is not indigne if good phisionomye 

Vche organ eye and al figure & lyne 


12 


At Oxenford thys lord his bookis fele 
Hath euery clerk at werk They of hem 
gete 90 
Methaphisic phisic these other feele 
They natural moral they rather trete 
Theologie here bye is with to mete 
Hem liketh loke in boke historial 
In deskis xij hym selue as half a strete 95 
Hath boked thair librair vniuersal 


13 


For clergie or knyghthod or husbondrie 

That oratour poete or philosophre 

Hath tretid told or taught in memorie 

Vche lef and lyne hath he as shette in 
cofre 100 

Oon nouelte vnnethe is hym to profre 


Yit Whethamstede and also Pers de 
Mounte 
Titus and Antony and y laste ofre 
And leest Our newe is old in hym ta- 
counte 
14 
But that his vertu list vs exercise 105 
And moo as fele as kan in vertu do 
He sapient is diligent to wise 
Alle ignoraunt and y am oon of tho 
He taught me metur make and y soso 
Hym counturfete and hope aftir my 
sorow 110 
In god and hym to glade and aftir woo 
To ioy and aftir nyght to sey good morow 


15 
And hym that held as doubil mortal foo 
Ten yeer my self and myne in wrong 
oppresse 
And yit my chirche and al my good me 
fro 115 
Hath in effect yit treste y god redresse 
But this matere as here is not texpresse 
As y seid erst in hope y thynke abide 
And to that princis werk my wit com- 


presse 

My wronge my woo my care y sette 
aside 120 

16 

And hym that lord that wt his woundis 
wide 

ffrom deth vs bought and hath our lif in 
cure 


Thorgh al this werk so derk he be my 
gide 
My wight he right my number and mes- 


ure 

That first for hym and thenne his crea- 
ture 125 

His princis flour good fruyt & fressh 
plesaunce 


Vpgrowe on hit in his Agriculture 
Maad at his hest and his Consideraunce 
Explicit Prohemium 


206 ANONYMOUS 


[EPILOGUE-STANZAS FROM THE PALLADIUS TRANSLATION ] 


(A) 

(The final stanza of Book II, January) 
A now my lord biholdith on his book 
ffor sothe al nought he gynnyth crossis 

make 
With a plummet and y noot whow his 
look 
His cheer is straunge eschaunge Almeest 
y quake 
ffor ferd y shrynke away no leue y take 
ffarwel my lord do forth for y am heer 
And metur muse out of this prosis blake 
And heer y wul sette on At ffeueryeer 


(B) 

(The final stanza of Book III, February) 
Good hope is reste and al yit shal amende 
Theron y treste And al this longe yeer 
Of husbondrie in hast y thynke anende 
The forme book is doon and Ianyueer 
And lo my lord in honde hath ffeueryeer 
Wul he correcte by what have y to done 
He wul doon as a lord Thenne aftir heer 
Asfaste y thynke on sette At Marchis 

mone 


(C) 
(The final stanza of Book V, April) 
And heer an ende er then y wende y 
fynde 
Eek done is in this mone art taught 
aforn 
O Saluatour o iesse flour so kynde 
Of oon for euerychoon that list be born 
And for vs hynge a crowne vsynge of 
thorn 
Honour be to The flour of flouris ay 
Thy princis werk away fro derk vpborn 
So make as heer y take ayeyn at May 


(D) 

(The final stanza of Book VI, May) 
Lo May is ronne away in litil space 
The tonge is short and longe is his 

sentence 
fforride y se my gide and hym y trace 
As he as swyft to be yit y dispence 
O sone o god allone o Sapience 
O hope of synys drope or fraude immuyn 
Louynge y to the synge as my science 
Kan do and forth y go to werk at Iuyn 


THE LOVER’S MASS 


The only copy of this poem known to the present editor bears, in the manu- 
script Fairfax 16 of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, no title; in the (perhaps 
contemporary) table of contents prefixed to the volume it is described as “The 
observaunce of Venus goddes of love”. In structure the work is plainly an imita- 
tion of the Mass, and a title recognizing this has been given the poem on each of 
its appearances in print. Jt was published by the Rev. T. F. Simmons in the ap- 
pendix to his Lay Folks’ Mass-Book, EETS 1879, as Venus’ Mass, and by me in 
the JourEngGer Philol for 1908 (vii: 95-104) as The Lover’s Mass. I adopted this 
wording to bring the poem into line with other medieval “parodies” such as the 
Missa Potatorum, Messe des Oisiaux, etc. 

Although “parody” of the Mass is not here carried through, breaking off 
after the Epistle, and although the headings do not exactly represent the parts 
of the Mass so far as the work goes, the trend is yet closely parallel. The euchar- 
istic ritual opens with the Introibo ad Altare, continues with a Confiteor to which 
“Misereatur” is the response, and then, after versicles and a silent prayer by the 
priest, proceeds to the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Collects for the day, the Epistle, and 
so on. Here the headings are Introibo, Confiteor, Misereatur, Officium, Kyrie, 
Gloria, Orison, and Epistle. 

In discussion of this exceedingly interesting and graceful piece of writing, 
there are two main lines to be followed: its place among the mass of religious 
“parodies” of the late Middle Ages, and its varied verse-structure. Among definite 
parodies the poem hardly belongs ; and indeed, many medieval writings so classified 
have but small parodic intent. Such compositions, when based on the Church 
service, may be divided into those which incorporate phrases from the ritual into 
a lay text, and those which follow the structure of the whole service, while pre- 
senting material of quite different character. The phrase-borrowing poems are the 
most numerous ; they may employ the phrases as a sort of tail-rime, or incorporate 
the words firmly into a macaronic poem of love or politics, or scatter them through 
what is in reality a character-study, as are the striking French Patenostre de 
lUsurier and Credo au Ribaut. In the former of these two poems, the contrast 
between the routine lip-service of phrase and the busy suspicious usurer-mind at 
work behind the automatic lips is drawn with an attempt at “psychology”. And 
neither this poem nor many another of the large class to which it belongs is true 
parody ; the writer’s intent is elsewhere. 

In the larger-scale type of poem various subdivisions may be made. The 
service may be gone through by headings only, to bring forward an array of 
speakers united by a common feeling, as in the clumsy English poem on the death 
of the duke of Suffolk, or as in the various bird-Masses of France and of England. 
There may be actual parody of the Mass both in structure and in language, in which 
case it is Latin prose, and runs beyond the bounds of piety and of taste, as in the 
Missa Potatorum or the Officium Lusorum. There may be a definite religious 
attempt at putting the Mass into current language, as in the Lay Folks’ Mass-Book. 
And the religious headings of the service may be used to introduce a series of lay 
compositions having little or no trace of ritualistic language or purpose. Of this 


[ 207 ] 


208 ANONYMOUS 


last-mentioned sort is the poem here printed, the only parallel to which, so far as 
I know, is the Spanish Misa de Amores. 

The accessible text bearing that title is by Suero de Ribera, who is said by 
Amador de los Rios, the historian of Spanish literature, to have imitated the Misa 
de Amores of Juan de Duefias. Both men were of the reign of John II of Castile, 
1406-1454. The poem of de Duejfias is still unpublished, but that of de Ribera 
has been twice printed, as noted below. Between it and our English text there is 
no comparison in metrical variety ; the Spanish work is a sequence of short love- 
lyrics arranged under the headings of the Mass and continued through it, the 
separate parts being often of no more than one stanza, the stanzas varying from 
six to twelve lines, and these lines being of uniform length. 

Whether the English writer obtained his suggestion of a Lover’s Mass from 
Spain or not, his work is far more striking, even in its incompleteness, than that 
of de Ribera, because of its change of metrical flow to support every change of 
tone. Shifts of form to suit an altered key can be adduced from earlier literatures, 
but few are noteworthy. The first which I have observed is the Ephemeris of 
Ausonius; in this poem, which narrates the events of a day, the vehicle changes 
from Sapphic to iambic as the poet passes from the awakening of the sleeper to 
the preparations for rising; the long Oratio is in hexameter, the ten-line Egressio 
in tetrameter, the giving of invitations to friends in hexameter again, and so on. 
Less rapid variations are easier to find. The most usual is that from verse to 
prose and back, two very conspicuous examples of which are the Consolatio of 
Boethius and the De Planctu Naturae of Alanus; as a later, French, case, we may 
note Froissart’s Méliador. Still simpler, and still more frequent, is the shift from 
couplet to stanza, as in Lydgate’s Temple of Glass or Hawes’ Pastime of Pleasure ; 
also the change from one stanza of equal lines to another, as may be seen in the 
envoys and prologues of works in rime royal. Later French poets and rhétori- 
queurs, such as Octovien de St. Gelais, freely used change of stanza to represent 
change of mood; and something of this is found in Machaut, in Chaucer’s time. 
But the only compact yet elaborate instance of such work in early English is 
Chaucer’s Anelida, which its copyist John Shirley declared was written in “pe 
mooste unkoube metre coloures and Rymes pat euer was sayde tofore pis day.” 
Shirley does not use any such language of the Chaucerian Complaint to his Lady, 
printed by Skeat i: 360; but this also has a variety of stanza. 

From all these our poem differs in the intensive management it makes of 
strophic variation. Its author is not merely dexterous and graceful in the complex- 
ities of the Kyrie, and aware of the clear singing quality of the Gloria-stanza, but 
he is sufficiently sensitive to make the change to the deeper slower seriousness of 
the Orison. It is this quick and complete yielding to the shift of mood which 
makes it impossible to believe that Lydgate was the author of the Lover’s Mass. 

Yet Simmons, in his edition as above, ascribed the poem to Lydgate ; and he 
was followed by W. A. Neilson in his monograph, The Origins and Sources of the 
Court of Love (see p. 233 there). Also the New English Dictionary, s. v. assuage, 
entitle, adopts the assignment. Lydgate can indeed reach a fairly high lyric-re- 
ligious note; parts of his Testament show this. But this variety, this swift clean 
release of each tone, are not his. He is able in a small way to change his key, but 
not with this firm quickness, this control of material, this absence of repetition 
and padding. There are, it is true, certain contacts between the Mass and the 


THE LOVER’S MASS 209 


work of Lydgate; but even when these contacts are recognized, the primary facts 
of speed and suppleness remain to dispute the monk’s authorship. 

One such contact is between the pilgrim-simile used in the Epistle here and the 
pilgrim-simile of Boccaccio’s De Casibus, bk. iii, developed thence by Laurent in 
his French prose, developed still more by Lydgate in the prologue to bk. iii of 
the Fall of Princes. The Latin and the French may be read in the note on the Fall 
of Princes C 92, here; and a comparison of them with the Epistle will show 
that Laurent’s French was probably known to the writer of the Mass. He is 
occasionally close to Laurent’s phrasing, he keeps at least one bit not retained by 
Lydgate, and he has a possible mistranslation not made by Lydgate. But did we 
take this agreement in source as evidence for Lydgate’s authorship of the Mass, 
we should have to assert that no English writer but Lydgate was in this period 
acquainted with Laurent’s translation of Boccaccio. 

Another and more important “contact” between the Mass and Lydgate is in 
the movement and phrasing of the prose Epistle here as compared with those of 
the prose passage, lines 16275 ff., of Lydgate’s Pilgrimage of the Life of Man. 
But the whole subject of prose in this period has still to be examined, and we do 
not as yet know, e.g., how far doublets may have been a conventional stylistic 
feature. It is therefore impossible to weigh such similarities of phrasing judicially. 

But a third “contact”, that of vocabulary, we can appraise. Suggestive al- 
though it may be, at first glance, to see the word contune used in the Mass, we 
must note that it appears in Bokenam as well as in Lydgate; that, also, words like 
allege, assuage, though common indeed in Lydgate, are not his sole property. An 
argument from vocabulary is too often the argument of the excluded middle; we 
cannot assert that no other writer used the term. Nor can we assert that the remin- 
iscences of Chaucer’s Anelida, or the false scansion of Citheron (line 5), or the 
padding phrase in line 34, mean Lydgate’s authorship; for all these are features 
common to the age. Lydgate’s composition of the poem seems very improbable, 
in the present state of our critical knowledge, because of traits in it larger than 
these ; but any positive theory of authorship we cannot offer. 

Nor can a definite theory as to the source be presented at this time. Very 
little is as yet known of the relation between English and Spanish letters in the 
fifteenth century. The alliances of Henry VIII with Katharine of Arragon and of 
Mary Tudor with Philip of Spain are so conspicuous in English history that we 
forget the earlier connections of England with Spain through John of Gaunt. His 
marriage with Constance of Castile in 1371 and his subsequent placing of his two 
daughters upon the thrones of Castile and of Portugal set a far earlier possible 
date for the transference of court-poetry from peninsula to island; and the bonds 
of commerce, the importation of Spanish secretaries, Spanish physicians, Spanish 
traders, into England before Tudor times, may have played some part in spreading 
West-European themes like the Dance Macabre or the confessions of a lover. 
Boccaccio’s De Casibus was translated into Castilian quite as soon as into French, 
and had a greater success in Spain than in France, to judge from the number 
of imitations. In fact, the identity of courtly taste between Castile, France, Bur- 
gundy, and England in this changing age is so marked that no study of the formal 
poetry of the period can be complete without an evaluation of Spain’s part,—for 
which, unfortunately, much of the source-material is still unpublished. 

An editor of the Lover’s Mass is therefore compelled to leave one possible 
line of the poem’s origin with the barest comment ; and as regards authorship even 


210 ANONYMOUS 


less is to be said. It could only be a cause of trouble for future students, to bind 
any name conjecturally upon this fresh and gracious fragment, which Chaucer 
need not have been ashamed to sign. 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST IX 


On parody and on religious parody see :— 

Paul Lehmann, Die Parodie im Mittelalter, Munich, 1922. 

Paul Lehmann, Parodistische Texte, Munich, 1923. 

Eero Ilvonen, Parodies de thémes pieux dans la poésie frangaise du moyen age, 
Paris, 1914. 

Adolph Franz, Die Messe im deutschen Mittelalter, Freiburg, 1902. 

Francesco Novati, La Parodia sacra nelle letterature moderne, in Studi Critici, Turin, 
1889. 

Missa Potatorum, in Lehmann, p. 59; in Franz, p. 754; in Novati, p. 289, in Reliquiae 
Antiquae (1843), ii:208. 

Messe des Oisiaus, by Jean de Condé, in vol. iii of A. Scheler’s ed., Brussels, 1866-67. 

Patenostre a l’Userier, in Ilvonen, pp. 44, 66; in Barbazan et Méon, Fabliaux, iv :99. 

Credo au Ribaut, in Ilvonen, p. 123; in Barbazan et Méon, of. cit., iv:445. 

Officium Lusorum, in Lehmann, p. 68; in Carmina Burana, ed. Schmeller (1883), p. 
248; in Franz, p. 754. 


The Laborintus, by Evrard 1’Allemand, is printed in Leyser’s Hist. Poetarum, p. 796 ff.; 
in Faral, p. 336 ff. 

Poem on the Earl of Suffolk’s death; see Wright’s Polit. Poems, Rolls Series, ii:232; 
see PolitReligandLove Poems, EETS 1903, pp. 6-11. 

Lay Folks’ Mass Book, EETS 1879. 

Misa de Amores of Suero de Ribera; see E. de Ochoa’s ed. of ‘Rimas Ineditas’ by the 
Marquess de Santillana and others, Paris, 1844, 1851, appendix. See also the 
Cancionero Castellano del Siglo XIV, vol. ii, Madrid, 1915. 

Octovien de St. Gelais, see monograph by H. J. Molinier, Paris, 1910, especially chap. 
on ‘Le Séjour d’Honneur.’ 

For English and Spanish letters in the xv century see:— 

Note sulla fortuna del Boccaccio in Ispagna nell’ Eta Media, by A. Farinelli, in 
Archiv 114:397-429 (De Casibus) ; ibid. 115 :368-388 (De Claris Mulieribus) ; 
ibid. 116:67-96 (De Genealogia Deorum, etc.) ; ibid. 117:114-141 (Teseide, 
Filostrato, etc., Decamerone). 


[MS Bodl. Fairfax 16, fol. 314] 


4 Introibo Of entent I may be take 10 
Wyth all myn hool herte enter To hys seruyse / and ther assure 
To fore the famous Riche Auter As longe / as my lyf may dure 
Of the myghty god of Love To contune / as I best kan 
Whiche that stondeth high above Whil I lyve / to ben hys man 
In the Chapel / of Cytheron 
I will wyth gret devocion § Confiteor 
Go knele / and make sacrifyse I am aknowe / and wot ryght well 15 


Lyke as the custom doth devyse 
Afor that God / preye and wake 


On the MS see note bottom p. 200. 


I speke pleynly as I fel 

Touchynge / the grete tendyrnesse 
Of my youthe / and my symplesse 
Of myn vnkonying / and grene age 


THE LOVER’S MASS 211 


Wil lete me han noon avantage 20 
To serue loue I kan so lyte 

And yet myn hert / doth delyte 

Of hys seruauntys / for to here 

By exaumple of hem / I myghte lere 
To folowe the wey / of ther seruyse 25 
Yif I hadde konnyng to devyse 

That I myght a seruant be 

Amongys other in my degre 

Havynge ful gret repentaunce 

That I non erste me gan avaunce 30 
In loue court / my selfe to offre 

And my seruyse / for to proire 

ffor ffer of my tender youthe 

Nouther be Est / nouther be Southe 
Lyst Daunger / putte me a bake 35 
And dysdeyn / to make wrake 
Wolde hyndre me / in myn entente 

Of al this thyng / I me repente 

As my conscience / kan recorde 

I sey lowly Myserycorde 40 


§ Misereatur 
By god of louys Ordynaunce 
fiolkys / that haue repentaunce 
Sorowful in herte / and no thyng lyght 
Whiche ha nat spent hys tyme aryght 
But wastyd yt in ydelnesse 45 
Only for lake of lustynesse 
In slep / slogardye / and slouthe 
Oi whom / ys pyte / and gret routhe 
But when they repente hem ageyn 
Oi al ther tyme / spent in veyn 50 
The god of love / thorgh hys myght 
Syth that Mercy passeth ryght 
The mot acceptyd be to grace 
And pute daunger out of place 
This the wyl of Dame Venus 55 
And of hyr Bisshop Genius 


§ Offcium 

In honour of the god Cupide 
first that he may be my guyde 
In worshepe eke of the pryncesse 
Whyche is lady / and Maystresse 60 
By grace they may / ior me provyde 
Humble of herie / devoyde oi pryde 
Envye and rancour set asyde 
With oute change / or doubilnesse 

In honour oi the 65 

first that he 
Joye and welfare in euery tyde 
Be yove to hem / wherso they byde 
And yive to hem grace / on my dystresse 
To have / pyte / of ther hyghnesse 70 


ffor in what place / I go or ryde 
In honour 


first that 


{ Kyrie 
Mercy : Mercy : contynuely : I crye 
In gret disioynt : vpon the poynt : to 
deye 735 
ffor that pyte : ys vnto me : contrayre 
Daunger my ffo : dysdeyn also : whylk 


: Of mortal smert : 


dyspeyre 

ffor she that ys : fayrest ywys : of 
ffayre 

Hath gladnesse : of my syknesse / to 
pleye & 


Thus my trouble / double and double / 
doth repayre 


€ Chrisie 
Repeyreth ay : which nyght nor day // 
ne cesseth nought 
Now hope / now dred / now pensyff- 


hede / now thought 
Al thyse yiere / palen myn chere / and 


hewe 
Yet to hyr grace ech hour / and space / 
I ha besought &s 


Hyr lyst nat here / ffor hyr daunger / 
doth ay renewe 

Towardys me 
nat rewe 

Vp on my peyne / and thus my cheyne / 
ys wrought 

Which hath me bounde / 
founde / vntrewe 


for certys she / lyst 


neuer to be 


{ Kyrie 
Vutrewe nay : to se that day : god for- 
bede 90 
Voyde slouthe / kepe my trouthe / in 
dede 
Eve and morowe / fior Joye or sorowe / 


I have behyght 
Til I sterve : ewere to serve / hir 
womanhede 


s 


In erthe lyvynge / ther is no thyng / 
maketh me so lyght 
fior I shal dye : ne but wer hir Mercye / 


mor than ryght 95 
Of no decertys / but Mercy certys / 
my Journe spede 


Adieu al play : thus may I say / I 
woiul wyght 


212 ANONYMOUS 


{ Gloria in excelsis 


Worsshyppe / to that lord above 
That callyd ys / the god of love 
Pes / to hys seruantes euerychon 100 
Trewe of herte / stable as ston 
That feythful be 


To hertys trewe of ther corage 
That lyst chaunge / for no rage 
But kep hem / in ther hestys stylle 105 
In all maner wedris ylle 
Pes concord and vnyte 


God send hem / sone ther desyrs 
And reles / of ther hoote ffyrs 
That brenneth at her herte sore TIO 
And encresseth / more and more 
This my prayere 
And after wynter / wyth hys shourys 
God send hem counfort / of May 
flourys 
Affter gret wynd / and stormys kene 175 
The glade sonne / with bemys shene 
May appere 
To yive hem lyght affter dyrknesse 
Joye eke after hevynesse 
And after dool / and ther wepynge 120 
To here / the somer foullys synge 


ffor ofte sythe men ha seyn 
A ful bryght day / after gret reyn 
And tyl the storme / be leyd asyde 125 
The herdys vnder bussh abyde 
And taketh place 


After also the dirke nyght 
Voyde off the Mone / and sterre lyght 
And after nyghtys / dool and sorowe 130 
ffolweth ofte a ful glade morowe 

Of Auenture 


Now lorde that knowest hertys alle 
Off louers / that for helpe calle 
On her trouthe / of mercy rewe 135 
Namly on swyche as be trewe 
Helpe to recure 
Amen 


{ The Oryson 


Most myghty / and most dredful lord 
That knowest / hertys fals and trewe 
As wel ther thynkyng as ther word 14 
Bothe of lovers / old and newe 

Off pyte / and of mercy rewe 

On thy seruauntes / that be stable 

And make ther Joye / to renewe 


God yive grace Swich as wyl neuer be chaungable 145 


{ The Epystel in prose 


ffrom the party of the por plentyff in love wyth many yers of probacon professyd to be 
trewe / To all the holy ffraternite and Confrary: of the same bretherhede / And to 
alle hospytlerys and Relygious / nat spottyd / nor mad foul wyth no cryme of Apos- 
tasye / nouthyr notyd nor atteynt wt no double fface / of symulacon nor constreyned 
countenaunce of ypocrysye // To alle swiche chose chyldre of stabylnesse wyth [150 
oute variaunce of corage / or of herte Joye / Elthe /: and long prosperyte / wyth 
perfeccon of perseueraunce / in ther trouthe perpetually / tabyde // Experyence 
techeth / that pilgrymes / and folkes custoumable to vyage // Whan they vnderfange / 
any long / weye wiche that ys laboryous // Somwhile off consuetude / and custoum / 
they vse a maner to reste on ther wey // Off entent to wype / and wasshe [155 
away / the soot of ther vysages // And sum also vsen to ley adoun the hevy ffardellys 
of ther bake // ffor to alleggen ther wery lemys / of her grete berthene / And 
somme outher vsen to gadryn wyne / And somme to drynken outher water or wyn // 
of ther botell or Goordys to asswage / the grete dryhnesse of ther gredy thruste // 
And somme of hem somwhile / rekne and accounten / how myche they ha [160 
passyd / off ther Journe / And sodeynly tourne ageyn ther bakkys towardys / som 
notable seteys Which they of newe / be partyd fro / And therwyth al Recorden / 
and remembren hem / of Cytes / Castelles / and touns which they ha passyd by / 
and nat forgete / hylles ne valeys / dygne / to be put in remembraunce of hyt / for a 
Memoryal / Somme entytlen hem / in smale bookes of Report / or in tablys / to [165 
callen hem to mynde / whan they sene her tyme / And som ought callen to mynde gret 
Ryuers and smale / And pereylles of the see that they ha passyd by / And whan they 
han alle accountyd / and ageyn Relatyd the partyes passyd off her Journe / Off 


THE LOVER’S MASS 213 


newe they take to hem force / vigour / and strengthe / myghtyly Wyth oute feyntyse / 
to performe / and manly to acomplysshe / the Resydue and the remnaunt of her [170 
labour // And thus .I. in semblable wyse / al the tyme of my lyff / ffrom my grene 
tendre youthe / And tyme that I hadde / yerys of dyscrecon beynge / and contynuynge 
/ as an Errynge pylgrym / in the seruyse of the myghty and dredful god of loue 
/ how many perylous / passages / and wayes / that I ha passyd by / How ofte in 
compleynynge I have setyn don // to wypen away the soot of myn inportable labour [175 
And dronken euer among of my botell and Goordes / the bytter drynkes / of drery- 
nesse / And offte sythes assayed / to casten adoun the inportable fardel / of myn 
heuy thoughtys / And amongys al this thyngys // lookyd bakward to consydren / 
and sen the fyn and the ende of my worthy bretheren / and predecessours in love // 
that ha passyd the same pilgrymage toforn // And ther I ha founden / and seyn [180 
the grete trouthe of Troylus / perseuerant to hys lyves ende // The trewe stable 
menyng of penalope / The clennesse of polycene // The kyndenesse off Dydo / quen 
of cartage / And rad also ful often in my contemplatyff medytacons The holy legende 
of Martyrs / of Cupydo / The secre trouthe of Trystram and ysoude And the smale 
Gerdouns of woful Palamydes / All thyse / and anhondryd Thousand mo callyd [185 
to mynde / me semeth / amonges all I am on of the most forsake / And ferthest 
set behynde of grace / And moste hyndred to be mercy of my lady dere / Nat wyth- 
stondynge the grete party of my pilgrymage / that I ha don But that I shal euere / 
for lyfe or deth / contynue / and perseuere trewe to my lyves Ende // Besechynge 
ful lowly / to alle yow my brethere / vn to whom thys lytel Epystel ys dyrect // [190 
That yt lyke yow / of pyte / amonge your / devout obseruaunces to han me Recom- 
endyd / wt som Especial Memorye / in your prayers / That yet or I dye / I 
may sum mercy fynde / Or that the god of love / Enspyre my ladyes herte of hys 
grace what I endure for hyr sake /—/ 


CHARLES D’ORLEANS 


Charles duke of Orléans, of the blood royal of France, was nephew to Charles 
VI, and son to that Louis d’Orléans who was murdered in 1407 by members of 
the household of the duke of Burgundy. He was born in 1391, and his mother 
was Valentine Visconti, of the great Milanese house of despots. Charles was but 
sixteen when he succeeded to his father’s position as one of the four greatest feu- 
dal nobles of France; he had been married a year earlier to Isabella, widow of 
Richard II of England, who died in 1409; the young duke married a second time 
in the following year, and in 1415 he was taken prisoner at Agincourt and carried 
to England. There he remained for twenty-five years, his ransom constantly dis- 
cussed and as constantly deferred by disputes over the attendant conditions ; and 
there a large amount of his French poetry was written. During his captivity his 
second wife, Bonne d’Armagnac, died ; and immediately upon his liberation, in 1440, 
Charles married a niece of the duke of Burgundy, the principal agent in his release. 
He died in 1455, having spent much of his time since his return to France at his 
own court of Blois. 

Charles left behind him a large mass of lyrical poetry, cast in the forms of 
ballade, chanson, and rondeau, and purporting to be autobiographical. The themes 
are courtly :—reproach of the loved one’s coldness, praise of her excellences, com- 
plaints against separation. One body of the poems, written in England, has much 
of exile and love-longing; many of the poems written after Charles’ return to 
France are more of the poetic-exercise type. His work was exceedingly popular 
in aristocratic circles of his own and the next age; for instance, in the long post- 
humous Chasse et Départ d’Amours of Octovien de St. Gelais a great number 
of Charles’ poems were incorporated, and the plan of his Poéme de la Prison 
adopted. (See Molinier’s monograph on Octovien.) Also, several poems by Charles 
are included in the Jardin de Plaisance, printed by Vérard about 1501; see the 
facs. reproduction by the Soc. des anciens textes francais, and Piaget in Romania 
21:581 ff. (Piaget on St. Gelais should be checked by Molinier as above.) And 
the translation of so much of Charles’ verse into English is a notable phenomenon. 

It is with these translations that we are especially concerned. They were 
termed “rubbish” by Hilaire Belloc, writing in the Athenaeum for 1904, ii:146; 
but few students of medieval verse will agree with this verdict. There is very 
little English verse in the fifteenth century worthy of comparison with these 
faithful, vigorous, and often graceful translations. Their editor has not yet arisen, 
although Sauerstein’s article below mentioned is an excellent preliminary study 
of the question ; but when he arrives, he will discuss various points indicating an- 
other than Charles as the author of the English versions. He will note, of course, 
the easy command of English in them, as compared with the stiff insecurity of the 
English bits preserved in French volumes; and he will have to consider the possi- 
bility either that lapse of years brought Charles to mastery of his gaolers’ language, 
or that in the French MSS the French scribe has garbled a fairly good English 
text. He will have to reckon with the fact that the personality behind the English 
recension is a more forceful and buoyant one than is the personality of the mass 
of the French poems; and he will have to note the presence in the translations of an 
occasional Chaucerian trace not in Charles’ French. 


[214] 


TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES D’ORLEANS 215 


These Chaucerian tinges may have filtered to our author through a second 
dilution, as in the phrase “morow gray”, or the car of Phoebus “whirlid up so 
high” (see poem xix of this group). But the reproach to Death has verbal echoes 
of the Book of the Duchesse, and line 877 of that poem is reflected in the line 
“Me thynkith youre eyen mercy seith.” Also, evening “revith day his light”, and 
birds sing “Right as the wood therewith should forshyuere” (see Charles’ poem 
xiv here). A very marked allusion to Chaucer is in the poem beginning, “When 
y am leyd to slepe as for a stound”; the lover cannot rest, 


For-all the night myn hert aredith round 
As in the romaunce of plesaunt chaucer. 


Here the French has,—“Rommant de Plaisant Penser.” Further, both Troilus 
and Anelida have given our writer such clues as “Thus ay diyng y lyue and neuyr 
dede” (Trolius iv:280), “How love for love is skilful gerdonyng” (Troilus 
ii: 392), and “So thrillith me in my remembraunce” (Anelida 211). 

The translator has a good ear for rhythm, something noteworthy in fifteenth- 
century England. He inserts ejaculations such as Mafay, Lo, especially the 
latter, to fill out his metre, and places those ejaculations carefully. See poems xiii, 
xvi, xviii, here; note also the use of the dissyllabic apast in xvi and the insertion 
of even in xvi’s refrain-line. The change from French to English is not accom- 
plished without frequent padding; but the way this is handled, and the way the 
French rime-sounds are now retained and now discarded is worth study. The rime 
-ft: -ght is fairly frequent ; the verb square and the metaphor of a shirt recur. The 
translator more than once refers to his “derked eyen’”’. Whoever that translator was, 
he was both bilingual and a good metrist. He twists his syntax with a strong hand, 
using sometimes difficult inversions. He wastes no words; he is not clumsy, and 
he does not blur the light tenderness of the French, though he does occasionally 
add firmness and freshness. Whether he be the duke of Suffolk, as Dr. Mac- 
Cracken suggests (‘see below p. 218), or an unknown clerk, he is not writing “rub- 
bish”. There are degrees of ease and of excellence among these translations, of 
course, but whoever wrote— 


When I am hushed it marvel is to me 
To hear my heart how that he talketh soft, 


was not writing rubbish. Whoever wrote the dialogue between the lover and his 
heart,— 

Seest thou not well that fortune doth us fail ? 

Hast thou good lust to live in sorrow ?—Nay, 

Iwis,—he said—I trust more to attain; 

I had a pretty look yet yesterday, 

As me reported have mine eyen twain,— 


was not writing rubbish. The spell of allegory and of the courtly love-code was 
heavy on Charles and on his translator, but both walk well despite their burden. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


In the year 1734 the abbé Sallier read to his fellow-members of the French 
Institut Royal a paper on a “recueil manuscrit de poésies de Charles d’Orleans”’, 
the MS in question being the “Colbert”, now in the Bibliotheque Nationale as 


216 ANONYMOUS 


fonds francais 1104,—according to Champion. This paper was published in 1740, 
in the Memoires de littérature tirez des registres de l’Academie royale des In- 
scriptions et belles Lettres, xiii:580-592. The abbé’s purpose was the demon- 
stration of Charles’ priority over Villon in the rebirth of French poetry. He 
cited portions of Charles’ French verse. 

Sallier was cited by the abbé Goujet in his Bibliothéque frangoise, ou Histoire 
de la littérature francoise, 18 vols., Paris, 1741-46; the discussion of Charles is in 
vol. ix: 230-287, and citations are more liberal than with Sallier. On p. 265 
Goujet remarks that Charles has among his poems “plusieurs en anglois’; no ex- 
amples of these are adduced. Goujet notes the fact that the Jardin de Plaisance 
borrowed from Charles. 

According to d’Héricault’s ed. of Charles’ poems, ii: 281, the Annales poéti- 
ques ou Almanach des Muses has in its vol. i, Paris, 1778, a “Choix de Poésies de 
Charles d’Orléans”. (This I have not seen.) The Marquis de Paulmy, in his 
Mélanges tirés d’une grande Bibliothéque, 68 vols. and index 69, Paris, 1779-88, 
treats of Charles, with extracts (French only), in vol. iv : 239-267. 

The first citation of Charles’ English verse seems to have been made by Mlle. 
de Keralio, in vol. iii of her Collection des meilleurs ouvrages francois, Paris, 
1786-88. This collection, issued by subscription, was run to about 36 vols., of 
which 14 appeared. The editor devotes pp. 140-167 to Charles, citing at length 
from Sallier, and supporting his point as to Charles’ superiority over Villon by 
printing Villon’s Ballade des dames du temps jadis and the Ballade addressed 
to the women of Paris. Villon, she says, obviously studied and imitated Charles, 
but ‘“n’obtint jamais la gloire de l’égaler’, as these poems, beside the duke’s, 
clearly prove. She speaks as if she used the MS known to Sallier, but when print- 
ing two English poems by Charles she states: “Je n’ai trouvé que deux essais de 
cette nature dans le manuscrit.’’ Goujet, however, used the words “plusieurs en 
Anglois”, and the MS fonds francais 1104 has, according to Guichard, nine Eng- 
lish poems. The texts printed by Mlle. de Keralio are those here numbered I and 
II. She appends to each a French prose paraphrase, and adds: “Ceux qui con- 
naissent la langue Angloise jugeront que ces vers sont assez bien tournés pour le 
temps, a l’exception de quelques mots qui ont vielli, et d’une ortographe assez mau- 
vaise.”” 

Horace Walpole, in his Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, 
reprinted Mlle. de Keralio’s two texts, and sneered at her high valuation of Charles, 
not as in comparison with Villon, but as a French poet. For “such is the poverty 
and want of harmony of the French tongue that one knows how very meagre 
thousands of couplets are which pass for poetry in France.” 

The existence of a mass of translations from Charles’ French into English, 
in the MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, was apparently first noticed by Joseph Ritson; 
he gave a specimen of what he assumed to be Charles’ English work in the dis- 
sertation prefixed to his Ancient Songs and Ballads, London, 1790. 

George Ellis, in his Specimens of the Early English Poets, first ed. 1790, 
fifth ed. 1845, printed i: 253-4 (1845 ed.) three English poems by Charles, which 
are found with a large quantity of his French work in MS Brit. Mus. Royal 16 
F ii. The texts form part of Ellis’ footnote on King James of Scotland; in this 
volume they are nos. IVb, X, and XI. See remark on the London Magazine below. 

Charles’ French poems were first edited in 1803, and three times since; of his 
editors only one has included the English texts found among his French verse. 
See below, following notes on the MSS. 


TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES D’ORLEANS 217 


In Park’s 1806 edition of Walpole’s work, Charles is treated 1:174-186. Park 
adds bits from the MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, and expresses surprise at Walpole’s 
ignoring of the London codices of Charles’ poems. 


Manuscripts 


The MS Bibliothéque nationale, fonds francais 25458, is fully described by 
Champion in Le manuscrit autographe des poésies de Charles d’Orléans, Paris, 
1907. Champion considers the codex as the verse-album of the court of Blois, 
after Charles’ return from captivity, and as partly in the script of Charles himself. 
He explains the composite appearance of the volume by supposing this sequence 
of facts:—1, That a professional scribe copied Charles’ work, that done while in 
England as prisoner, in the first part of the volume, and that Charles made cor- 
rections upon this with his own hand. 2, That in the following pages later poems, 
mainly by Charles himself, but also by others, were copied by various scribes, 
Charles being one. 3, That while the book as originally planned contained many 
chansons written in the lower parts of pages with the upper halves left blank for 
the music, a change of plan or need of space led to the use of those upper half- 
pages for poems subsequently entered. 

This MS contains, among the French, nine English poems, here printed. The 
similar texts found in the Grenoble MS, which is less complete than this “auto- 
graph” MS, were printed by Champollion-Figeac in his ed. of Charles, and re- 
printed from him by Bullrich (three texts), by Sauerstein (two texts), and by 
MacCracken (eight texts). 

The MS Bodl. Fairfax 16, described in my Chaucer Manual, pp. 333 ff., con- 
tains one of the nine English poems found in the “autograph” MS, transcribed 
into Fairfax with a body of courtly verse of similar nature. See the suggestion 
by MacCracken as to authorship, below. 

The MS Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii is a very large and handsome vellum volume, 
written, as Sir George Warner has suggested, for Arthur prince of Wales, son 
of Henry VIII, ca.1500. It is in a big deeply black professional hand, the 
enormous illuminated capitals and the line-capitals stiff with gilt ; it contains several 
fine fullpage illuminations, one of which, representing the Tower of London and 
Charles seated at a window, has been several times reproduced. See Edgar Tay- 
lor’s Minnesingers, London, 1825, to face p. 286; see Warner’s Illuminated MSS of 
the British Museum, 1893; see the illustrated ed. of Green’s Short History of the 
English People, ii: 640; see frontispiece to Benham’s Tower of London, 1906; see 
Champion’s Vie de Charles d’Orléans, Paris, 1911, frontispiece. On the MS see 
Warner as cited, Sauerstein as below, and the Catalogue of Western MSS in the 
Old Royal and Kings’ Collections, London, 1921. 

This MS contains among the French three English poems, one of which is also 
in the “autograph” manuscript. The three are printed by Ellis as above; two are 
printed by Costello and by Champollion-Figeac, three by Sauerstein and by Mac- 
Cracken. 

The MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, which consists of a great number of English 
translations of Charles’ French verse, is a moderate-sized vellum volume of 148 
leaves, written in one smallish neat unprofessional hand, apparently of the fifteenth 
century. In transcription, spaces were left for capitals, which were never sup- 
plied. It has been freely corrected by the same or a similar hand in a manner 
which often suggests translator’s rather than scribe’s revision; but this and all 


218 ANONYMOUS 


questions connected with the codex are too closely bound up with the problem 
of authorship to enter upon here. The book contains, according to Sauerstein, 222 
poems; for discussion of it see Sauerstein as below. 

This codex, unmentioned by Walpole or by Ellis, was noted by Ritson as 
above; he printed one text from it in 1790; and Walpole’s editor, Park, in 1806, 
added several others. In 1838 the savant Francisque Michel, sent by his govern- 
ment to investigate French MSS in English libraries, reported fully on this volume; 
see his Rapports a M. le ministre (etc.), 1838. Previous to Michel’s investigation, 
in 1827, there had been issued for the Roxburghe Club a print of the entire con- 
tents of Harley 682, edited by George Watson Taylor, who assumed that the trans- 
lations were the work of Charles himself. His edition, which is defaced by very 
many textual errors and prefaced by a scanty and valueless introduction, was 
published in but 44 copies. His assertion as to Charles’ authorship was doubted 
by a writer in the Retrospective Review for 1827, p. 147; but Sir Frederick Mad- 
den, in his book on Illuminated Ornament, London, 1833, took the authenticity 
of the translations as proved, and it was nearly seventy years before the papers 
of Bullrich and of Sauerstein (see below) dealt more exactly with the question. 
Bullrich opined that the Harley 682 poems show an easy flowing style, the English 
poems included in French MSS a stiff and shambling movement. He concluded 
that the Harley 682 translations were the work of an Englishman. Sauerstein, 
going more fully into the subject, arrives at the same conclusion; and Saintsbury, 
in his Encycl. Brit. article on Charles, thinks the attribution to Charles “without 
certainty”. 

An interesting suggestion as to the translator’s identity was made by H. N. 
MacCracken in PMLA 26:142 ff. (1911), viz., that the author of the group of 
English love-poems preserved in MS Bodl. Fairfax 16 and the author of these 
translations is one and the same person,—the earl of Suffolk, William de la Pole, 
made duke of Suffolk in 1449, the year before his death. Suffolk was for several 
years Charles’ English custodian, and the two men became friends, Suffolk visit- 
ing Charles at Blois in 1444, after the French duke’s liberation. A few French 
poems by Suffolk still exist, in MS Trinity College Cambridge R 3,20, and one 
of the English poems of Fairfax 16 appears also in Charles’ “autograph” MS, 
whence it is here printed, p. 222 below. Dr. MacCracken thinks that this English 
poem, like the rest of the Fairfax group, was by Suffolk, and was translated into 
the “Blois album” in the same way that various other poems by Charles’ friends 
were there included. Both the Fairfax group of love-poems and the Harley 682 
translations show metrical command and show the influence of Chaucer; but the 
attributions of the two sets of texts to one person and the identification of that 
person as Suffolk are as yet matter of conjecture. 

Since Taylor’s print, no complete edition of the Harley 682 poems has ap- 
peared. In Wiilker’s Altengl. Lesebuch, Halle, 1874-80, ii:122-4, are printed three 
English texts from Harley, headed as by Charles. Twelve texts from it are printed 
in this volume; but a fac-simile of Harley 682, with full discussion of the author- 
ship problem, is a desideratum. 

Four English poems translated from Charles and apparently part of a collec- 
tion similar to that in Harley 682, are in a MS-fragment owned by the antiquary 
Thomas Hearne; they are reprinted from Hearne’s Diaries by Hausknecht in 
Anglia 17 :445-7, and may be seen also in Bliss’ Reliquiae Hearnianae, London, 
1869, i:265-67. 


TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES D’ORLEANS 219 


Manuscripts of Charles’ French poems, other than the “autograph MS”, are 
not here discussed ; see the French editors and biographers of Charles as below. 


Editions of Charles’ French Poems. 


The earliest of these was by P. V. Chalvet, librarian of the Grenoble collection, 
pubd. Grenoble 1803, repr. 1809. The texts are from the less complete Grenoble MS 
of Charles’ work, and the editing is severely censured by Champollion-Figeac. I have 
not seen the book. 

Poésies de Charles d’Orléans,—d’aprés les manuscrits des bibl. du Roi et de 
l’Arsénal, J. M. Guichard, Paris, 1842. 

Les poésies du duc Charles d’Orléans, publiées sur le manuscrit de la bibl. de Gren- 
oble conferé avec ceux de Paris et de Londres, etc., A. Champollion-Figeac, Paris, 1842. 

Guichard’s text appeared eight days previous to that of Champollion-Figeac, 
apparently in deliberate rivalry; and each editor followed up his text by an 
introduction or appendix censuring the procedure of the other. Guichard’s 
preference for the La Valliére MS, now known as the “autograph”, will 
be endorsed by modern students; his omission of the nine English poems 
from his print, an omission censured by his rival, will not be endorsed. 
The English poems are printed by Champollion-Figeac from the Grenoble 
MS, and reprinted from him by MacCracken as above, with some conjectural 
emendations. 

Poésies complétes de Charles d’Orléans, revues sur les manuscrits,—etc., C. 
d’'Héricault, Paris, 1874, 2 vols. Again 1896. The English poems are not printed. Text 
based on the “autograph” MS. 

There are French poems, marked as by Charles, in various English MSS. See 
the texts of Trinity College Cambridge R 3, 20 as above mentioned; also four quat- 
rains in Brit. Mus. Harley 7333, printed thence by MacCracken in PMLA 26:145 note. 


Translations from Charles’ French, other than those in Harley 682 


In the London Magazine for Sept. 1823, pp. 301-6, is an unsigned article on 
Charles, with the text of five French poems from the ed. of 1809 and an English verse- 
translation of each. These are followed by the statement that the writer has found 
three English poems by Charles in a MS of the British Museum; the subjoined texts 
are those in Royal 16 F ii, nos. IVb, X, XI as here printed. The emendations of Ellis 
are repeated or adopted; is the translator George Ellis? See above, p. 216. 

In Edgar Taylor’s Lays of the Minnesingers, London, 1825, pp. 286-93, is a dis- 
cussion of Charles, with verse-translations of five poems. One of these coincides with 
one of the London Magazine set, and comparison is interesting. 

Verse-translations of nineteen poems by Charles, and a print of two of his English 
poems from the Royal MS (IVb, X as here), are included in Louisa S. Costello’s 
Specimens of the Early Poetry of France, London, 1835. 


Prose ascribed to Charles 


One French prose work, a debate between the heralds of England and of France, 
was ascribed to Charles by Henry Pyne, in his England and France in the Fifteenth 
Century, London, 1870. The attribution was successfully disputed by P. Meyer in:— 

Le débat des hérauts d’armes de France et d’Angleterre, suivi de “The debate be- 

tween the heralds of England and France by John Coke.” Paris, 1871, SATF. 


220 ANONYMOUS 


Studies on Charles’ Life and Work. 


Champollion-Figeac, Louis et Charles d’Orléans, leur influence sur les arts, la 
littérature, et l’esprit de leur siécle, d’aprés des documents inédits, Paris, 1844. 
. Beaufils, Etude sur la vie et les poésies de Charles d’Orléans, Coutances, 1861. 
. Kuhl, Die Allegorie bei Charles d’Orléans, Marburg diss., 1886. 
. Bullrich, Ueber Charles d’Orléans u. die ihm zugeschriebene englische Uebersetz- 
ung seiner Gedichte, progr. Berlin, 1893. 
. Minster, Die Lautverhaltnisse in der neuengl. Uebersetzung der Gedichte des Her- 
zogs von Orléans, progr. Berlin, 1894. 
Sauerstein, Charles d’Orléans u. die englische Uebersetzung seiner Dichtungen, 
Halle, 1899. 
. Champion, Le manuscrit autographe des poésies de Charles d’Orléans, Paris, 1907. 
, La librairie de Charles d’Orléans, avec un album de facsimiles, Paris 
1910. 
————_—_——., Vie de Charles d’Orléans, Paris, 1911. 
. N. MacCracken, An English Friend of Charles of Orleans, in PMLA 26:142 ff. 
. Champion, A propos de Charles d’Orléans, in Romania 49:580-4 (1923). 
This article consists of two notes: 1, La dame anglaise de Charles d’Orléans, 
and 2, Recueils imprimés contenant des poésies de Charles d’Orléans. With 
the first cf. my note as below, in Mod. Phil.; with the second cf. Piaget in 
Romania 21:581, “Une edition gothique de Charles d’Orléans”; and see Molinier 
Essai . . . sur Octovien de St. Gelais, chap. iv (1910). 
E. P. Hammond, Charles of Orleans and Anne Molyneux, ModPhil 22:215-6 (1924). 


PO EO: ac ip Nae Veto Cae he 


wi 


The verse-work of Charles may be classed in four groups. 1, His French 
poems, preserved in a dozen or more MSS in England and France. 2, A small 
body of rondeaux written in English, preserved among these French poems. 3, 
A considerable body of English translations from his existing French verse, prob- 
ably not by Charles himself, and remaining in but one MS, Harley 682 of the 
British Museum. 4, About 77 English poems, mainly in stanza, intermingled with 
the poems of 3, in the same MS, but having so far as yet known no French original. 
This last subdivision I do not here consider, and I make it merely for the con- 
venience of future investigators. With the first subdivision I am now concerned 
only in so far as the French poems are the sources of work in our third or English 
group; to this third, and the second, we limit ourselves. There are here printed the 
entire body of Charles’ recognized English verse, and twelve selections from the 
English translations of his verse. Regarding this last, one word further. 

Charles was twenty-five years a prisoner in England, and the honorable con- 
finement in which he was held did not preclude his meeting with the households 
of his various gaolers, perhaps with their English friends. M. Pierre Champion’s 
article in Romania 49 as above calls attention to a passage in King René of Anjou’s 
Livre du Cuer d’Amours Espris; René, who knew Charles well, there says that 
fi prins fuz des Anglois et mené en servaige, Et tant y demouray qu’en aprins 
la langaige, Par laquel fus acoint de dame belle et saige, Et d’elle si espris qu’a 
Amours fis hommaige, Dont maints beaux ditz dictié bien prisez davantaige”’, etc. 
In the MS the blank here left at the beginning of the extract is filled by the name 
of “Charles quint de France, roy vertueux et saige”; this, M. Champion says, 
must be a scribal alteration, as the facts fit only Charles of Orleans. Should the 
substitution of Orleans’ name be justified, we have René’s support not only for 





TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES D’ORLEANS 221 


the fact of Charles’ learning English, but for his becoming enamoured of his in- 
structress. Champion suggests the countess of Suffolk, Alice Chaucer, as the tutor 
and beloved lady, and seems to feel that the Harley 682 poems may be the amorous 
verse to which René refers. But the existence of the name Anne Molins in one of 
Charles’ original English rondeaux (see no. VI here) inclines to the belief that a 
lady of that name was more probably the admired of Charles, and that the poems 
addressed to her may be no more than the half-score composed in English by him. 

These English poems written by Charles have been often printed, viz.: Two 
by Mlle. de Keralio, nos. I, II here, from a Bibl. nat. MS; these were reprinted 
by Walpole. Three by Ellis from the Royal MS,—nos. IVb, X, XI here. Two 
by Costello from the Royal MS,—nos. IVb, X here. The entire group by Cham- 
pollion-Figeac from the Grenoble and the Royal MSS, in his edition of Charles. 
Three by Bullrich from that edition—nos. II, X, XI here. Four by Sauerstein 
from that edition and from the Royal MS,—nos. IVb, X, XI, I here. Two were 
printed from the Royal MS (X, XI), one from the Fairfax MS, and eight from 
Champollion-Figeac, by MacCracken as above. The three printed by Ellis are also 
in the London Magazine for 1823, pp.301-6, as ante. 


Fes 
POEMS'WRITTEN IN ENGLISH 


I 
[Bibl. Nat. fonds frang. 25458, p. 346] 
Myn hert hath send glad hope in hys 
message 
Vnto comfort plesans Ioye and sped 
I pray to god that grace may hym leed 
Wythout lettyng or daunger of passage 
In tryst to fynd profit and auauntage 5 
Wyth yn short tym to the help of hys ned 
(M)yn hert &c. 
(V)nto comfort &c. 
Till pat he come myn hert yn ermytage 
Of thoght shall dwel alone god gyve hym 
med 10 
And of wysshynge of tymys shal hym fed 
Glad hope folyw & sped wel thys viage 
(M)yn hert &c. 


II 
[ibid.] 
Whan shal thow come glad hope fro pi 
vyage 
Thow hast taryd to long many a day 
ffor all comford is put fro my away 
Tyll that I here tythynge of by message 
(W)hat that had be lettyng of thy 
passage 5 
Or tariyng alas I can not say 
(W )hen shal &c. 
(T)how hast &c. 


Thow knows ful wel pat I have gret 


damage 
In abydynge of the that is no nay 10 
And thof y synge & dauns or lagh and 
play 


In blake mournyng is clothyd my corage 
(W )han shal &c. 


III 
[Bibl. Nat. fonds frang. 25458, p. 310] 
A 3ens the comyng of may 
That is ful of lustynes 
Let vs leue al heuynes 
As fer as we can or may 


Now is tym of myrth and play a 
Wynter weth hys ydylnes 
Is dyscomfet as y ges 
And redy to fle away 
Azgens &c. 


Wherfore ladys. I 30w pray 
That 3e take in 30w gladnes 10 
And do al 30ur besynes 
To be mery nyght and day 
Azjens &c. 


IV A 
[Bibl. Nat. fonds franc. 25458, p. 310] 
Go forth my hert wt my lady 


222 ANONYMOUS 


Loke that ye spar no bysynes 
To serue hyr wyth seche lowlynes 
That 3e get hyr grace and mercy 


Pray hyr of tymes pryuely 

That sche guippe trewly hyr promes 
Go forth &c. 

I most as a hertles body 

Abyde alone in heuynes 

And 3e schal do wel wyth your mais- 


a 


tres 10 
In plesans glad and mery 
Go forth &c. 
IV B 


[Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii, fol. 69a] 


Go forth my hert wt my lady 

Loke that ye spare no bysynes 

That ye gette her oftyme pryuely 

That she kepe truly her promes 5 
Go forth &c. 

Iniust as a helis body 

Abyde alone in heuynes 

And ye shal dwell with your mastres 

In plaisauns glad and mery 
Go forth &c. 


V 
[Bibl. Nat. fonds frang. 25458, p. 311] 


for the reward of half a 3ere 
Tow trewe louys upon the brest 
hyt ys y now to brynge yn rest 
A hert that loue hold yn dangere 
Whenne he hath be sume wat stran- 
gere 5 
To hym ys holyday and fest 
For the &c. 
Thousch hyt be a Juel ful dere 
And a charme for the tempest 
Yet y conseille hym to be prest IO 
And fore a3ens the warderere 
For the &c. 


VI 
[ibid.] 
A las mercy wher shal myn hert yow fynd 
Neuer had he wyth yow ful aqwaintans 
Now com to hym and put of hys greuans 
Ellys ye be vnto yowr frend vnkynd 


Mercy he hath euer yow in hys mynd 5 
Ons let hym haue sum conforth of plesans 
Alas mercy &c. 


Let hym not dey but mak at ons a uende 
In al hys woo an right heuy penans 
Noght is the help that whyl not hym 
avans 10 
Slauth hys to me and euer com be hynde 
Alas mercy &c. 


VII 
[ibid., p. 312] 
Ye shul be payd after your whylfulnes 
And blame nothyng but your mysgouern- 


ans 

For when good loue wold fayn had yow 
auans 

Then went ye bak wyth wyly frawhyed- 
nes 

I know anon your sotyl wyleness 5 


And your danger that was mad for ascans 
Ye schal be &c. 
Ye might haue been my lady and maistres 
For euer mor with outhyn varians 
But now my hert yn yngland or in 
france Io 
Ys go to seke other nyw besynes 
Ye schal be &c. 


VIII 
[tbid., p. 312) 

So fayre so freshe so goodely on to se 
So welle dymeynet in al your gouernans 
That to my hert it is a grete plesans 

Of your godenes when y remembre me 
And trustyth fully wher that euer y be 5 
I wylle abyde vndyr your obeyssance 

So fayre &c. 


For in my thought ther is nomo but ye 
Whom y haue seruid wythout repentance 
Wherfore y pray yow sethe to my greu- 


ance 10 
And put o syde all myn aduersite 
So fayre &c. 
IX 


[ibid., p. 318] 
O thou fortune which hast the gouernance 
Of all thynges kyndely meuyng to se fro 
Thaym to demene after thyn ordonnance 
Right as thou lyst to grante hem wele 
or wo 
Syth that thou lyst that I be on of tho 5 
That must be rewlyd be thyn auisines 
Why whylt thou not wythstand myn 
heuynes 


TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES’ FRENCH 223 


2 
Me thyng thou art vnkynde as in thys 
case 
To suffre me so long a whylle endure 
So grete a peyn . wehout mercy and 
grase 10 
Which greuyth me right sore I the ensure 
And syth thou knawst / I am that crea- 
ture 
That wolde be fauourd be thy gentilles 
Why whylt thou not wythstand myn 
heuynes 


3 

What causyth the to be myn aduersarie 15 

I haue not done which that schuld the dis- 
plese 

And yit thou art to myn entent contrarie 

Which makyth alwey my sorous to en- 
crese 

And syth thou wotst myn hert ys not in 
ese 

But euer in trouble wythout sykyrnenes 20 

Why wylt thou not wythstand myn heuy- 
nes 


4 
To the allonly thys compleynt I make 
For thou art cause of myn aduersite 
And yit I wote welle thou mayst vnder- 
take 


For myn welfare if that thou lyst agre 25 


I haue no cause to blame no wyght but 
the 

For thys thou doste of verrey wylfulnes 

Why wylt thou not wythstand myn 
heuynes 


x 
[Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii, fol. 118a] 
My hertly loue is in your governauns 
And euer shal whill pat I lyue may 
I pray to god I may see that day 
That we be knyt with trouthfull alyans 
Ye shal not fynd feynyng or variauns 5 
As in my part that wyl I trewly say 
My hertly &c. 
XI 


[ibid., fol. 131a] 
Ne were my trewe innocent hert 
How ye hold with her aliauns 
That somtym wt word of plesauns 
Desceyued you vnder couert 
Thynke how the stroke of loue com 
smert 5 

Without warnyng or defhauns 

Ne were my &c. 
And ye shall pryuely or appert 
See her by me in loues dauns 
Wyth her faire femynyn contenauns 10 
Ye shall neuer fro her astert 

Ne were my &c. 


TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES’ FRENCH 


Lue soit cellui qui trouua 

Premier le maniere descripre 

En ce grant confort ordonna 

Pour amans qui sont en martire 

Car quant ne peuent aler dire 5 
A leurs dames leur grief tourment 

Ce leur est moult dallegement 

Quant par escript peuent mander 

Les maulx quilz portent humblement 
Pour bien et loyaument amer 10 


Quant vng amoureux escripra 
Son dueil qui trop tient de rire 


Honure and prays as mot to him ha- 
bound 

That first did fynde the wayes of writyng 

ffor comfort gret ordeynyd he that 
stounde 

To suche as haue of louys payne felyng 

ffor when to speke they naue tyme nor 
metyng 

To say ther ladies of ther aduersite 

Yet doth it them a gret tranquyllite 

ffor to endite and sende as in writyng 

What grevous lyf they lede as semeth me 

Only for loue and feithful trewe serv- 
yng 10 


Who so that write how he is wrappid & 
wounde 


224 ANONYMOUS 


Au plustost quenuoye laura 

A celle qui est son seul mire 

Si lui plaist a la lettre lire 15 
Elle puet veoir clerement 

Son douloureux gouuernement 

Et lors pitie lui scet monstrer 

Qui dessert bon guerdonnement 

Pour bien et loyaulment amer 20 


Par mon cuer ie congnois pieca 

Ce mestier car quant il soupire 

Iamais rapaisie ne sera 

Tant quil ait enuoye detire 

Uers la belle que tant desire 25 
Et puis sil puet aucunement 

Oyr nouuelles seullement 

De sa doulce beaulte sans per 

Il oublie lennuy quil sent 

Pour bien et loyaulment amer 30 


Lenuoy 
Madame dieu doint que briefment 
Uous puisse de bouche conter 
Ce que iay souffert longuement 
Pour bien et loyaulment amer 


From MS Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii, foll. 31 b-32 a. 


Fortune vueillez moy laissier 

En paix vne fois ie vous prie 

Trop longuement a vray conter 

Auez eu sur moy seigneurie 

Tousiours faictes la rencherie 5 
Uers moy et ne voulez oyr 

Les maulx que mauez fait souffrir 

Il a ia plusieurs ans passez 

Dois ie tousiours ainsi languir 

Helas et nest ce pas assez 10 


Plus ne puis en ce point durer 

A a. mercy . mercy ie crie 

Souspirs mempeschent le parler 

Uoir le pouez sans mocquerie 

Il ne fault ia que ie le die 15 


In suche greef as kan kepe him from 
laughyng 

And so may sende it to his lady round 

Which is the leche to all his soore felyng 

If then to rede hit be to her plesyng 175 

She may right wele therin perceyue and 
se 

What woofull gouernaunce endewrith he 

Of whiche pite may geue hir hit mevyng 

That his desert is reward of mercy 

Only for loue and feithfull trewe serv- 


yng 20 
That hit is thus in myn hert haue y 
found 
And knowe the craft for when he tath 
sekyng 


No thyng kan him appese vpon the ground 
To he haue send or made sum endityng 
On the fayre which is his most likyng 25 
Of which if so that his fortune be 

To haue a response of hir gret bounte 
He tath therin so huge a reioysyng 

That forget is he had on his party 

Only for loue and feithfull trewe serv- 


yng 30 
But what madame crist ewre me so that 
ye 


May vndirstonde as bi my mouth telyng 
What y haue dewrid in tymys quantite es 
Only for loue and feithfull trewe servyng * 


From MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, fol. 16. 


O ffortune dost thou my deth conspyre 
Onys let me pese y pray thee hertily 
ffor all to longe y fynde withouten wyre 
That thou hast had vpon me the maystry 
Whi dost thou straunge when y thi mercy 
cry 2 
Hast thou disdayne me caytiff forto here 
That thus wt payne hast brought vnto be 
bere 
That how y ben so longe y mervell how 
With greef y haue endewrid many yere 
Alas alas and is this not ynough Io 


Longe in this lyf may y not dewren here 

A a fortune mercy y cry mercy 

Of my compleynt harke be carfull matere 

And not arett my rewdisshe speche mok- 
kery 


TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES’ FRENCH 225 


Pource vous vueil ie requerir 

Quil vous plaise de me tolir 

Les maulx que mauez amassez 

Qui mont uns iusques au mourir 

Helas et nest ce pas assez 20 


Tous maulx suis content de porter 

Fors vng seul qui trop fort mennuye 
Cest qui me fault loing demourer 

De celle que tiens pour amye 

Car pieca en sa compaignie 25 
Laissay mon cuer et mon desir 

Uers moy ne veulent reuenir 

Delle ne sont iamais lassez 

Ainsi suis seul sans nul plaisir 

Helas et nest ce pas assez 30 


Lenuoy 
De balader Jay beau loisir 
Autres deduitz me sont cassez 
Prisonnier suis damour martir 
Helas et nest ce pas assez 
From MS Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii, foll. 25 b-26. 


Also in Paris, Bibl. Nat. fonds fr. 25458, 
pp. 60-61. 


Trop long temps vous voy sommeillier 
Mon cueur en dueil & desplaisir 
Vueilliez vous ce jour esueillier 

Alons au bois le may cueillir 

Pour la coustume maintenir 5 
Nous orrons des oyseaulx leglay 

Dont ils font les bois retentir 

Ce premier jour du mois de may 


Le dieu damours est coustumier 

A ce jour de feste tenir 10 
Pour amoureux cueurs festier 

Qui desirent de le seruir 

Pour ce fait les arbres couurir 

De fleurs & les champs de vert gay 
Pour la feste plus embellir 5 
Ce premier jour du mois de may 


ffor whi to iape not lustith me trewly 15 

Wherfore y the right humbly requere 

To take fro me that thus me sett afyre 

The greef and smert / a welaway syn 
thou 

Vnto the deth as hast ybrought me nere 

Allas allas and is this not ynough 20 


I may wel bere eche payne or displesere 
Saue only on which on me causith dy 
That y so longe dwelle fro my lady dere 
Whom y haue chose to loue no wondir 
why 
ffor tyme agoon as in hir company 25 
Lefft y myn hert / my ioy and my desere 
That neuyr sith list come / to do me 
chere 
ffor werry there in no thing lo they mowe 
Thus lyve y sovl without ioy or plesere 
Allas allas and is this not ynough 30 


To balade now y haue a fayre leysere 
All othir sport is me biraught as now 
Martir am y for loue and prisonere 
Allas allas and is this not ynow 


From MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, foll. 27 b-28a. 


To longe for shame and all to longe 
trewly 

Myn hert y se thee slepe in displesere 

Awake this day awake o verry fy 

Lete vs at wode go geder may in fere 

To holde of oure oold custome the 
manere 5 

Ther shall we here the birdis synge and 
pley 

Right as the wood therwt shuld forshy- 
uere 

This ioly tyme this fresshe first day of 
may 


The god of loue this worldis god myghti 
Holdith this day his feste to fede and 
chere 10 
The hertis of vs poore louers heuy 
Which only him to serue sett oure desere 
Wherfore he doth affoyle the trees sere 
With grene / and hath the soyle yflowrid 
gay 
Only to shewe his fest to more plesere 15 
This ioly tyme this fresshe first day of 
may 


226 


Bien scay mon cueur que faulx dangier 


Vous fait mainte paine souffrir 
Car il vous fait trop eslonguier 
Celle qui est vostre desir 

Pour tant vous fault esbat guerir 
Mieulx conseillier je ne vous scay 
Pour vostre douleur amendrir 

Ce premier jour du mois de may 


Lenuoy 
Madame mon seul souuenir 
En cent jours nauroye loisir 
De vous raconter tout au vray 
Le mal qui tient mon cueur martir 
Ce premier jour du mois de may 


From MS Bibl. Nat. fonds fr. 25458, p. 71. 
not in Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii. 


Balade 


Las mort qui ta fait si hardye 

De prendre la noble Princesse 

Qui estoit mon confort ma vie 
Mon bien mon plaisir ma richesse 
Puis que tu as prins ma maistresse 
Prens moy aussi son seruiteur 

Car iayme mieulx prouchainement 
Mourir que languir en tourment 
En paine soussy et douleur 


Las de tous biens estoit garnie 
Et en droitte fleur de ieunesse 
Je pry a dieu quil te mauldie 
Faulse Mort plaine de rudesse 
Se prinse leussiez en viellesse 
Ce ne fust pas si grant rigueur 
Mais prinse las hastiuement 

Et mas laissie piteusement 

En paine soussi et douleur 


Las ie suy seul sans compaignie 
Adieu ma dame ma leesse 

Or est nostre amour departie 

Non pourtant ie vous fais promesse 
Que de prieres a largesse 


th 
Nn 


Text 


Gr 


IO 


T5 


XV 


ANONYMOUS 


Myn hert thou wost how daungere hath 
on whi 

Doon thee endure full greuous paynes 
here 

Which doth the longe thus absent thi 
lady 

That willist most to ben vnto hir nere 20 

Wherfore the best avise y kan thee lere 

Is that thou drawe thee to disportis ay 

Thi trowbely sorow therwt to aclere 

This ioly tyme this fresshe first day of 
may 


My first in thought / and last my lady 
dere 23 

Hit axith more then this oon day leysere 

To telle yow loo my greef and gret affray 

That this wolde make myn hert a poore 
martere 

This ioly tyme this fresshe first day of 
may 


From MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, fol. 33. 


Allas deth who made thee so hardy 

To take awey the most nobill princesse 
Which comfort was of my lyf and body 
Mi wele my ioy my plesere and ricchesse 
But syn thou hast biraft me my mays- 


tres : 5 
Take me poore wrecche hir cely servi- 
ture 


ffor leuyr had y hastily forto dy 
Than langwysshe in pis karfull tragedy 
In payne sorowe and woofull aventure 


Allas nad she of eche good thing plente 79 
ffowryng in youthe and in hir lustynes 
I biseche god a cursid mote thou be 
O false deth so full of gret rudenes 
Had thou hir taken in vnweldynes 
As had thou not ydoon so gret rigure 
But thou alak hast take hir hastily 
And welaway this left me pitously 
In payne sorow and wooful aventure 


5 


Allas alone am y without compane 

ffare well my lady fare well my gladnes 

Now is the loue partid twix you and me 

Yet what for then y make yow here 
promes ° 

That wt prayers y shall of gret larges 


TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES’ FRENCH 227 


Morte vous seruiray de cuer 

Sans oublier aucunement 25 
Et vous regretteray souuent 

En paine soussy et douleur 


Dieu sur tout souuerain seigneur 
Ordonnez par grace et doulceur 

De lame delle tellement 30 
Quelle ne soit pas longuement 

En paine soussy et douleur 

From MS Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii, foll 93b-94a. 


Also in Patis, Bibl. Nat. fonds fr. 25458, 
pp. 82-83. 


Balade 
Quant souuent me ramentoit 
La grant beaute dont estoit plaine 
Celle que mon cuer appelloit 
Sa seule dame souueraine 
De touz biens la vraye fontaine 5 
Qui est morte nouuellement 
Te dy en plourant tendrement 
Ce monde nest que chose vaine 


Ou viel temps grant renom couroit 

De crisayde yseud helayne 10 
Et maintes autres quon nommoit 
Parfaictes en beaulte haultaine 

Mais au derrain en son demaine 

La mort les prist piteusement 

Parquoy puis veoir clerement 15 
Ce monde nest que chose vaine 


La mort a voulu et vouldroit 

Bien le congnois mettre sa paine 

De destruire selle pouoit 

Leesse et plaisance mondaine 20 
Quant tant de belles dames maine 

Hors du monde car vrayement 

Sans elles a mon iugement 

Ce monde nest que chose vaine. 


Here serue yow ded while my lyf may 


endure 
Without forgetyng in slouthe or slog- 
ardy 25 


Biwaylyng oft yowre deth wt wepyng ey 
In payne sorow and wofull aventure 


O god that lordist euery creature 

Graunt of thi grace thi right forto mesure 

On alle the offensis she hath doon wil- 
fully 30 

So that the good sowle of hir now not ly 

In payne sorow and wofull aventure 

From MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, foll. 38b-39a. 


There are some erasures and alterations in 
this text, for which see Notes. 


When y revolue in my remembraunce 
The bewte shappe and be swete eyen 
t(w)ayne 
Of hir y callid myn hert hool plesaunce 
Mi lyvis ioy my sovl lady souerayne 
Of eche good thewe that was be fressh 
fountayne 5 
Which newly deth hath tane O welaway 
ffor which y say wt wepyng eyen t(w)ay 
That this world nys but eyen a thyng in 
vayne 


In tyme apast ther ran gret renomaunce 
Of dido cresseid Alcest and Eleyne 10 
And many moo as fynde we in romaunce 
That were of bewte huge and welbesayne 
But in the ende allas to thynke agayne 
How deth hem slew and sleth moo day 
bi day 
Hit doth me wel aduert this may y say 15 
That this world nys but even a thyng in 
vayne 


Me thenkith that deth cast bi his gouern- 
aunce 

fforto distroy all worldly plesere playn 

fforwhi he doth therto his gret puyssh- 
aunce 

That hath allas so moche fayre folkis 
slayn 20 

And dayly slethe / what ioy doth he 
refrayne 

Out of this world and bryngith in such 
dismay 

ffor without them y iuge this mafay 

That. this world nys but even a thyng 
in vayn 


228 ANONYMOUS 


Lenuoy 
Amours pour verite certainte 25 
Mort vous guerrie fellement 
Se ny trouuez amendement 
Ce monde nest que chose vaine 


From MS Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii, foll. 95b-96. 
Bie Paris, Bibl. Nat. fonds fr. 25458, 
p. 8 


XVII 


Balade 

Le lendemain du premier iour de may 
Dedens mon lit ainsi que ie dormoye 
Au point du iour mauint que ie songay 
Qur deuant moy vne fleur ie veoye 

Qui me disoit Amy ie me souloye 5 
En toy fyer / car pieca mon party 

Tu tenoyes / mais mis las en oubly 

En soustenant la fueille contre moy 
Jay merueille que tu veulx faire ainsy 
Riens nay meffait se pense ie vers toy 10 


Tout esbahy alors ie me trouuay 

Si respondy au mieulx que ie sauoye 
Tresbelle fleur onques ie ne pensay 

Faire chose que desplaire te doye 

Se pour esbat auenture menuoye 15 
Que ie serue la fueille cest an cy 

Doy ie pourtant estre de toy bany 
Nennyl certes ie fais comme ie doy 

Et se ie tiens le party quay choisy 
Riens nay meffait se pense ie vers toy 20 


Car non pourtant honneur te porteray 

De bon vouloir quelque part que ie soye 

Tout pour lamour dune fleur que iamay 

Ou temps passe / dieu doint que ie la 
voye 

En paradis apres ma mort en ioye 25 

Et pource fleur chierement ie te pry 

Ne te plains plus car cause nas pourquoy 

Puis que ie fais ainsi que tenu suy 

Riens nay meffait se pense ie vers toy 


O god of loue thou may perseyue cer- 
tayne 25 

To myn entent that deth thee warrith ay 

So se y wel but though hit menden may 

That this world nys but even a thyng 
in vayne 


From MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, foll. 42b-43a. 


The secund day of fayre fresshe lusty 
May 

As half in slepe in slombir half wakyng 

Me mette this sweuene in spryngyng of 
pe day 

How to me came a flowre this resonyng 

Me and seide / my frend y had trustyng 5 

Whilom that thou had holde on my parte 

But now me thynke thou hast forgoten 
me 

And strengthist lo the leef ageyn me sore 

I merveyle wherin y haue greuyd thee 

Me thynke y haue deservid not wher- 
fore 10 


Sore basshid y when y this herde hir say 

Aftir my rewde havoure this answeryng 

Moost goodly flowre god helpe me so al- 
way 

As y thought neuyr doon ayenst yow 
thyng 

Yow to displese but happe of such ches- 
yng 15 

The leef to serue this heyre hath made 
me he 

Ought ye therfore me blame then nay 
parde 

Syn so to doon is vsid evirmore 

And ye me blame as for my poore dewte 

Me thynke y haue deservid not wher- 
fore 20 


Als yow in cheef that do y honoure ay 

What part y am as is me well sittyng 

All for oon flowre that me was tane 
away 

In tyme a past god graunt vs sone metyng 

In paradice the howre of my deiyng 25 

O flowre wherfore ye not displesid be 

ffor cause therto well wote y noon nave ye 

Though that y levys were a thousand 
skore 

Whi blame ye me whi shewe ye crewelte 


TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES’ FRENCH 229 


Lenuoy 
La verite est telle que ie dy 30 
Jen fais iuge Amours le puissant roy 
Tresdoulce fleur point ne te cry mercy 
Riens nay meffait se pense ie vers toy 


From MS Royal 16 F ii, foll. 97b-98a. Text also 
in aries Bibl. Nat. fonds fr. 25458, pp. 
88-89. 


Me thynke y haue deservid not wher- 
fore 30 


The trouthe is this hit light is forto se 
God be my Juge y kan no ferthirmore 
ffor where ye seine y axen shulde merce 
Me thynke y haue deservid not wherfore 


From MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, fol. 44. 


XVIII 


Chancon 
En la forest damoureuse tristesse 
Ung iour mauint qua par moy cheminoye 
Ie rencontray lamoureuse deesse 
Qui mappella demandant ou ialoye 
Te respondy que par fortune estoye 5 
Mis en exi! en ce bois long temps a 
Et qua bon droit appeller me pouoye 
Lomme esgare qui ne scet ou il va 


En sourriant par (sa) tresgrant hum- 
blesse 

Me respondy amy se ie sauoye 10 

Pourquoy tu es mys en ceste destresse 

A mon pouoir voulentiers tayderoye 

Car ia pieca ie mis ton cuer en voye 

De tout plaisir ne scay qui len osta 

Or me desplaist qua present ie te voye 15 

Lomme esgare qui ne scet ou il va 


Helas dis ie souueraine princesse 

Mon fait sauez pourquoy le vous diroye 
Cest par la mort qui fait a tous rudesse 
Qui ma tollu celle que tant amoye 20 
En qui estoit tout lespoir que iauoye 
Qui me gardoit sy bien macompaigna 
En son viuant que point ne me trouuoye 
Lomme esgare qui ne scet ou il va 


Lenuoy 
Aueugle suy ne scay ou aler doye 25 
De mon baston affin que ne fouruoye 


In the forest of noyous hevynes 

As y went wandryng in the moneth of 
may 

I mette of loue the myghti gret goddes 

Which axid me whithir y was away 

I hir answerid as fortune doth convey 5 

As oon exylid from ioy al be me loth 

That passyng well all folke me clepyn 
may 

The man forlost that wot not where he 
goth 


Half in a smyle ayen of hir humblesse 

She seide my frend if so y wist ma fay 0 

Wherfore that thou art brought in such 
distresse 

To shape thyn ese y wolde my silf assay 

ffor here to fore y sett thyn hert in way 

Of gret plesere y not whoo made thee 
wroth 

Hit grevith me / thee see in suche 
aray 15 

The man forlost that wot not where he 
goth 


Allas y seide most souereyne good prin- 
cesse 
Ye knowe my case what nedith to yow 


say 

Hit is thorugh deth that shewith to all 
rudesse 

Hath fro me tane that y most louyd ay 20 

In whom that all myn hope and comfort 
lay 

So passyng frendship was bitwene vs 
both 

That y was not / to fals deth did hir 
day 

The man forlost that wot not where he 
goth 


Thus am y blynd allas and welaway 25 
Al fer myswent with my staf grapsyng 


230 ANONYMOUS 


Ie voy tastant mon chemin ca et la 
Cest grant pitie quil conuient que ie soye 
Lomme esgare qui ne scet ou il va 


From MS Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii, foll. 131b-132. 
Text also in Paris MS Bibl. Nat. fonds fr. 
25458, pp, 89-90. 

1. Paris reads dennuyeuse tristesse. 

9. sa is inserted from Paris. 

18. diroye is from Paris. Royal reads 
coniroye. 

The French was printed in the 1501 Jardin 
de Plaisance, fol. 201b; see facsimile is- 
sued by the Soc. d. anc. textes fr. 


Balade 
Le beau soleil le iour saint Valentin 
Qui aportoit sa chandelle alumee 
Na pas long temps entra par vng matin 
Priueement en ma chambre fermee 
Celle clarte quil auoit aportee 5 
Sy mesueilla du somme de soussy 
Ou iauoye toute la nuyt dormy 
Sur le dur lit damoureuse pensee 


Ce iour aussi pour partir leur butin 
Des biens damours faisoyent assemblee 10 
Tous les oyseaulx qui parlans leur latin 
Cryoyent fort demandans leur liuree 

Que nature leur auoit ordonnee 

Cestoit dun per comme chascun choisy 
Sy ne me peuz rendormir pour leur cry 15 
Sur le dur lit damoureuse pensee 


Lors en mouillant de lermes mon coissin 
Je regretay ma dure destinee 

Disant oyseaulx ie vous voy en chemin 
De tout plaisir et joye desiree 20 
Chascun de vous a per qui luy agree 

Et point nen ay. car Mort qui ma trahy 
A pris mon per dont en dueil ie languy 
Sur le dur lit damoureuse pensee 


Lenuoy 
Saint Valentin choisissent cest annee 25 
Ceulx et celles de lamoureux party 
Seul me tendray de confort desgarny 
Sur le dur lit damoureuse pensee 


From MS Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii, fol. 134. Text 
Bee Paris, Bibl. Nat. fonds fr. 25458, 
p. 93. 
Paris reads in line 3—entra un bien matin. 
In 8, 16, 24, 28 it reads dennuieuse pensee. 
Line 20, omitted by Royal, is here given 
from Paris. 


wey 

That no thyng axe but me a graue to 
cloth 

ffor pite is that y lyue thus a day 

The man forlost that wot not where he 
goth 


From MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, fol. 46 b-47 a. 


Whan fresshe Phebus day of seynt val- 
entyn 

Had whirlid vp his golden chare aloft 

The burned bemys of it gan to shyne 

In at my chambre where y slepid soft 

Of which the light that he had wt him 
brought 5 

He wook me of the slepe of heuynes 

Wherin forslepid y all the nyght dowtles 

Vpon my bed so hard of newous thought 


Of which this day to parten there bottyne 

An oost of fowlis semblid in a croft 10 

Myn eye biside and pletid ther latyn 

To haue wt them as nature had them 
wrou3t 

Ther makis forto wrappe in wyngis soft 

ffor which they gan so loude ther cries 
dresse 

That y ne koude not slepe in my distres 15 

Vpon my bed so hard of newous thought 


Tho gan y reyne wt teeris of myn eyne 
Mi pilowe and to wayle and cursen oft 
My destyny and gan my look enclyne 

These birdis to and seide ye birdis 


ought 20 
To thanke nature where as it sittith me 
nou3t 
That han yowre makis to yowre gret 
gladnes 


Where y sorow the deth of my maystres 
Vpon my bed so hard of noyous thought 


Als wele is him this day that hath him 
kaught 25 

A valentyne that louyth him as y gesse 

Where as this comfort sole y here me 
dresse 

Vpon my bed so hard of noyous thought 


From MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, foll. 47b-48a. 


TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES’ FRENCH 


Chancon 


Prenez tost ce baiser mon cuer 

Que ma maistresse vous presente 

La belle bonne ieune et gente 

Par sa tresgrant grace et doulceur 5 

Bon guet feray sur mon honneur 

Affin que danger riens nen sente 
Prenez etc. 

Dangier toute nuyt en labeur 

A fait guet or gist en sa tente 

Acomplissez brief vostre entente 

Tandis quil dort cest le meilleur 
Prenez &c. 


Io 


English from MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, fol. 77b. 
French from MS Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii, 
fol. 124b; copy also in Paris, Nat. 
fonds fr. 25458, p. 271. 


Bibl. 


Chancon 


Te ne vueil plus riens que la mort 
Pource que voy que reconfort 
Ne puet mon cuer esleesser 
Au moins me pourray ie vanter 
Que ie seuffre douleur a tort 5 
Car puis que nay despoir le port 
Damours ne puys souffrir leffort 
Ne doy ie donc ioye lasser 

Te ne &c. 
Au dieu damour ie men rapport 
Quen pains suys boute sy fort 
Que pouoir nay plus dendurer 
Sen ce point me fault demourer 
Quant de moy ie my accort 

Te ne &c. 


Io 


English from MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, fol. 68a. 
French from MS Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii, 
fol. 117b; copy also in Paris, Bibl. Nat. 
fonds fr. 25458, p. 251. 


XX 


XXI 


231 


Take take this cosse atonys atonys my 
herte 
That thee presentid is of thi maystres 
The goodly fayre so full of lustynes 
Only of grace to lessen wt thi smert 
But to myn honoure loke thou well 
avert 5 
That daunger not parseyue my sotilnes 
Take take this 
That thee 
Daunger wacchith al nyght in his shert 
To spye me in a gery currisshenes 10 
So to haue doon attones let se thee 
dresse 
While in a slepe his eyen ben covert 
Take take this 
That thee 


More then the deth nys thyng vnto me 
leef 
Syn recomfort vnto my karfull greef 
May noon be found to ioy my woofull 
hert 
But as a wrecche avaunt y may of smert 
That wrongfully my payne is to geef 5 
ffare well hope for noon may me releef 
Thorugh loue fortune hath cast me to 
myschef 
Which shapen had my deth to fore my 
shert 
More then the 
Syn recomfort 
May noon ben 
O god of loue thou wost y am no theef 
Nor fallyng of my trouthe thou kan not 
preef 
Whi shall y dey then wolde y fayn aduert 
Although from deth y kepe not now 


IO 


astert 15 
Though that he stood right even here at 
my sleve 


More then the 
Syn recomfort 
May noon ben 


252 ANONYMOUS 


Chancon 


De la regarder vous gardez 
La belle que sers ligement 
Car vous perdrez soudainement 
Vostre cuer se la regardez 
Se donner ne le luy voulez 5 
Clignez les yeux hastiuement 
De la. &c. 
Les biens que dieu lui a donnez 
Amblent vng cuer soubtilement 
Por ce prenez auisement 10 
Quant deuant elle vous vendrez 
De la regarder. &c. 


English from MS Brit. Mus. Harley 682, fol. 72a. 
French from MS Brit. Mus. Royal 16 F ii, 
fol. 119a; text also in Paris, Bibl. Nat. 
fonds fr. 25458, p. 254. 


Bewar y rede yow loke here not vpon 
The goodly fayre that y loue feithfully 
ffor ye shall lese yowre hert even sodayn- 
ly 
If so be that ye cast her lokyng on 
Wherfore but ye lust gefe yowre hert 
anoon 
Shette vp yowre eyen and close hem we 
surely 
Bewar y 
The goodly 
ffor the bewte she hath bi god alon 
Hit stelith lo an hert so pratily 10 
That but ye bet abowt yowre silf aspy 
Or ye be war yowre hert shall be goon 
Bewar y 
The goodly 


XXII1 


Chancon 
Ie me mets en vostre mercy 
Tresbelle bonne ieune et gente 
On ma dit questes mal contente 
De moy ne scay sil est ainsy 
De toute nuyt ie nay dormy 5 
Ne pensez pas que ie vous mente 
Ie me metz &c. 
Pource treshumblement vous pry 
Que vous me dictes vostre entente 
Car dune chose ie me vante 10 
Quen loyaulte nay point failly 
Te me metz &c. 
The English text is from MS Brit. Mus. Harley 
682, fol. 83a; the French from Brit. Mus. 
Royal 16 F ii, fol. 129a, compared with the 


text in Paris, Bibl. Nat. fonds fr. 25458, 
p. 278. 


I put my silf vnto youre mercy lo 
Moost goodly fayre most replete of 
bounte 
Hit seid me is that ye are wroth wt me 
Not wot y whi nor where hit be or no 
But all the nyght ne slepen y for woo 5 
Saue thenke and muse wherfore that hit 
shuld be 
I put my 
Most goodly 
Allas beth not so moche to me my foo 
But youre entent wherfore as let me se 0 
ffor this y vaunt my silf that y am he 
That kepe his trouthe and shall wherso y 
go 
I putt my 
Most goodly 


FROM HARDYNG’S CHRONICLE 
Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt 


John Hardyng was born in 1378, of a Northern family, and at twelve years 
of age entered the service of the Earl of Northumberland. He was at the battle of 
Shrewsbury in 1403, and witnessed the death of his master “Hotspur”. He then 
went into the service of Sir Robert Umfraville, in which he remained for the 
rest of his life. With Sir Robert he took part in the battle of Agincourt, and saw 
other foreign service. According to a rubric in MS Lansdowne 204, he was at 
Rome in 1424. Sir Robert iater made Hardyng constable of his castle of Kyme, 
Lincolnshire, where Hardyng lived for many years ; he was working on his Metrical 
Chronicle as late as 1464, when he was eighty-six years old, and it does not seem 
probable that he long survived that date. 

Hardyng was commissioned by the English Crown to seek in Scotland for 
evidence of the feudal relation between that country and England, and much time 
was spent in this search. The documents which he brought forward to attest the 
homage due from Scotland to the English sovereign were, however, too probably 
forged by himself ; and this and his constant demand to be rewarded for “discov- 
ering” them have seriously damaged his reputation with modern students. Nor is 
that reputation raised by his Chronicle, which, extending from mythical times to 
his own day, rarely contains anything independent of previous chronicles. 

He several times rewrote his work for different royal patrons. The earlier 
recension, of which the unique copy is Lansdowne 204 of the British Museum, 
and which was apparently the presentation text offered to Henry VI, concludes 
with the death of Hardyng’s master, Sir Robert Umfraville, in 1436; it is of about 
2700 stanzas in rime royal. Kingsford considers that it was partly composed be- 
tween 1440 and 1450. A different and briefer version was subsequently prepared 
for Edward IV; the MS Harley 661, which Lee in the DictNatBiog terms “the 
best of the later versions’, has less than 1800 stanzas. There are two MSS in 
the Bodleian Library, one (Arch. Selden B 10) bearing the arms of Percy Earl 
of Northumberland (ob. 1527). In 1543 Richard Grafton the printer issued two 
editions of Hardyng’s work, following one of the later recensions, but in a form 
differing from any surviving copy; and in 1812 Sir Henry Ellis edited one of 
these. 

Two brief bits from MS Harley 661 are printed by Wulker, Altengl. Lese- 
buch, ii: 73-75. Two stanzas were printed by Mrs. Cooper in her (1737) Muses’ 
Library. 

There is no literary merit whatever in Hardyng’s work; its doggerel stupidity 
shows the uselessness of battle, foreign travel, and scholarly pursuits to summon 
any real response from a “spirit dried up and closely furled”. 

For discussion of Hardyng and his Chronicle, see C. L. Kingsford on The 
First Version of Hardyng’s Chronicle, in Engl. Hist. Review 27 :462-482 (1912). 

See Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, Ox- 
ford, 1913, chapter vi. Kingsford considers that a comparative edition of the 
various recensions of the Chronicle would be of no value. The differences be- 
tween them, he says, are so great that no “critical” edition is possible. 

On Hardyng’s language see W. Hagedorn, Ueber die Sprache einiger nord- 
licher Chaucerschiiler, Gottingen 1892, p. 15. 


[ 233 ] 


234 JOHN HARDYNG 


On Agincourt see Sir N. H. Nicolas’ History of the Battle of Agincourt, 1832. He prints 
1) on pp. 301-329 a poem from MS Harley 565, which is attributed to Lydgate; 
this is in 3 passus, and covers not only Agincourt but the preceding siege 
of Harfleur and the sttbsequent triumphal entry of Henry into London. 
2) along with the above, on pp. 303-325, a similar but shorter poem, from 
Hearne’s edition of Elmham’s life of Henry V, the text offered by a Cot- 
tonian MS now lost, Vitellius D xii. 
3) in his Appendix, pp. 69-77, a poem on the same subject, from a black letter 
copy. This is also to be found in Hazlitt’s EEPopPoetry ii:92-108, and in 
Arber’s Engl. Garner, Westm., 1897, viii:13-24, its text there modernized 


and ascribed to Lydgate. 


Thomas Wright, in his PolitPoems ii:123-27, prints eight stanzas of verse on the battle, 
which appear in MS Cott. Cleopatra C iv with a prose account. 

The Latin prose of the Gesta Henrici Quinti, see ed. by Williams, London, 1850, was 
used by Hardyng for this poem, according to Kingsford as above p. 49. It is 
translated into English and printed by Nicolas as above, pp. 183-300. 

Other verses on the battle or on Henry’s return are printed by Nicolas, pp. 67-8, 78-86. 

Capgrave’s allusion to the battle, in his Chronicle of England, ed. Rolls Series, 1858, 


is very slight. 


On Oldcastle see the poem of Hoccleve in the EETS ed. of his work, iii:8 ff. 


[MS Brit. Mus. Lansdowne 204, chapter 211] 


Henry his sonne / that prynce of wales 
was than 

On seynt Cuthbert / day than next fol- 
owynge 

In marce was crounde / as I remembre 
can 

And als ennoynte / at Westmynster for 
kynge 

Of whom the reme / was glad with oute 
lesynge 5 

Obeyand hym / in alkyns ordynaunce 

As subgytz owe / to ryall gouernaunce 


Z 
In his friste yer / the Cobham Errytyke 
Confedred with / lollers incipient 
Agayne the Chirche / arose and was full 
lyke 10 
It haue distroyed / by thar intendement 
Had noght the kynge / than made sup- 
powelment 
And toke thaym vp / by gode inspeccioun 
That friste bygan / that insurreccioun 


3 
Than fled the lorde / Cobham errony- 
ouse 5 
To Wales so / with lollers many one 
Musyng in his / oppynyoun venymouse 


How that he myght / the chirche distroy 
anone 
Bot god that sytte / in heuen aboue all- 


one 
Knowyng his herte / naked of gode sente- 
ment 20 


Lete hym be take / to haue his Jugyment 


That prisonde was / at london in the 
Toure 

Of whiche he dyd / eschape away by 
nyght 

And taken was agayn with in an houre 

And after sone / dampned by law and 
right 25 

ffor errisy / by all the Clergy sight 

And brent he was / tyll askes dede and 
pale 

Thurgh cursed lyfe / thus came he in 
grete bale 


5 
The kynge than sette / vpon all rightwys- 
nesse 
Of morall wytte / and all benygnyte 30 
All openly / he ordeynde in expresse 
That all men myght with oute diffyculte 
The Archebisshop / of yorke vysyte and 
se 


FROM THE CHRONICLE 235 


That Rychard Scrope / so hight full 
graciouse 

ffor whom god shewed / myracles ne 
uouse 


6 
Kynge Rycharde als / at langley leyde in 
erthe 
Agayne his wyll / and all his ordynaunce 
By comaundement / of kynge Henry the 
ferthe 
ffor folke of hym / shulde haue no re- 


membraunce 
The kynge toke vp / with riall ordy- 
naunce 40 


And toumbed fayre / byside his wyfe 
quene Anne 
With all honoure / that myght be done 


by manne 
7 
The kynge so than / right in his seconde 
yer 


In his parlement / by gode benyvolence 

At laycestr / foure dukes made in fer 45 

His brother Thomas / duke of Clarence 

His brother John / for grete expedience 

Duke off Bedford / he made by hole de- 
cre 

That next was than / sette in all dignyte 


8 

His brother Vmfray / next hym he P 
create 

‘The so than / of Gloucestre a 
style 

“Thomas Bewford / his Eme Erle of 
Dorsette 

-He made than duke / of Excester that 


while 

And thar he graunte / than as I can 
compyle 

Henry Percy his londes / that wer in 
tayle 55 

‘To sewe thaym oute / by lawe and gouer- 
nayle 


9 
On Mawdelayne day the thirde yer of his 


rygne 

‘Syr Robert than / Vmframvyle dyd so 
ryde 

In Scotlande so / and to none wolde re- 
sygne 

His power right / bot on hym toke that 
tyde 60 

‘That laboure hole / and toke hym to his 
gyde 


And tolde hym whare / he shulde hym 
brynge and lede 

Whar that he toke grete gode with outen 
drede 

10 

And faught with thaym / at Greterigge 
in batayle 

Whare eghtene score / of Scottes were 
dede and slayne 65 

Nyne hundre fled / he folowed at thair 
tayle 

On whom he made / grete chace the 
sothe to sayne 

Twelfe myle on lenghe / with thaym he 
rode agayn 

Whare in the chase / bot with ffyve 
hundre men 

He toke thaym vp / and slew thaym 


fleand then 70 
11 
At lammesse after / the kynge to Nor- 
mandy 


At hampton was / with all his hoste to 
sayle 

Whare than the Erle of Cambrige cer- 
tanly 

The lorde Scrope als / Sir Thomas gray 
no fayle 

The kynges deth / had caste for thair 
avayle 75 

Of whiche the kynge was ware and toke 
all thre 

And heded hem at hampton by decre 


12 

And helde hys way / to harflete than 
anone 

And wanne it so / and made ther of 
Captayne 

His Eme the duke / of Excester allone fo 

Ande homwarde went / by Calays so 
agayne 

At Agyncourte / the ffrensshe hym mette 
sertayne 

And with hym faught / with hoste in- 
nomerable 

Whare thay were take / and wonne with 
outen fable 


13 
The duke was take / that day of Orli- 
ence 85 
The duke also / of Burboyne certaynly 
The Erle wendome / that was of grete 
credence 


236 JOHN HARDYNG 


And sir Arthur / of Bretayn verryly 
* o* * * * * * * 


With many mo / of other prisoners 90 
That taken wer / as sayne Cronyclers 


14 
The dukes thre / of Bare and Alaunson 
And of loreyne / were in that batayle 
slayn 
And for thair lyfes / they payed no more 
raunson 
Who to thayr wyfes / no more cam 
nought agayne 
Bot on that grounde / thar dyde thay 
certayn 
ffourty thousonde thar layde thair lyfes 
to wedde 
ffor thair raunson / me thought thay had 
wele spedde 
15 
On oure syde / was of yorke Duke Ed- 
ward slayne 
A myghty lorde / and ffull of sapi- 
ence I00 
And few elles mo / of Englisshe men 
certayne 
As I consayue / that were of reuerence 
That was bot grace / of goddes omni- 
potence 
ffor Englisshe men / nyne thousond 
noght excede 
That faught agayne / an hundre thou- 
sonde in dede 105 
16 
On seynt Crispyne / and Crispynian day 
This batayle sore / certanly was smyten 
At Agyncourte / as thay with sette his 
way 


ffor whiche the kynge / gan fight as wele 
was wyten 

With thaym anone / whare wer slayne 
vnsmyten IIo 

Thousondes smored / thurgh thayr mul- 
titude 

That wolde haue fledde / fro his excelsi- 
tude 


17 

The yere of Criste / a thousonde and 
foure hundre 

And seuentene eke / whan that this same 
batayle 

Was smyten so / and of the regne no 
wonder 115 

The thirde yere was / that tyme with 
outen fayle 

And home thay came / than to thair 
moste avayle 

Thurgh Pykardy / by Guynes and Calays 
than 

And thare thay shipte / and into Englond 


wan 
18 

In Englonde than / in the somer se- 
son 120 

The Emperour / of Rome sir Sygis- 
mounde 

Was with the kynge / and made by grete 
encheson 

Of the Garter / a knyght so in that 
stounde 


And to the reule / and ordreur sworne 
and bounde 

And had his stall / vpon the kynges liite 
honde 125 

In the Colage / of seynt George I vndyr- 
stonde 


LONDON LICKPENNY 


This poem narrates in stumbling metre, but with freedom and vivacity, the 
“experiences of a poor Kentishman in Westminster and London. The author, 
speaking in his own person, represents himself as going the round of the lawyers 
in Westminster Hall to get a hearing for his case; but as he has no money, no one 
will take it up. He leaves Westminster and goes through the city of London, 
among the hawkers and vendors, to Billingsgate, where he would fain ferry over 
to the Surrey and Kent side of the Thames. Here again his lack of money 
is against him, but ultimately he gets back to his plow, resolved to meddle no 
more with the law. 

A similar descriptive effort is seen in the seventeenth-century poem The 
Puisnes Walks about London, printed in Reliquiae Antiquae, 11:70, from MS 
Harley 3910. And cf. the Latin parody in Carmina Burana, pp. 22-23; also the 
complaint against the ecclesiastical law-courts printed from Harley 2253 by Wright 
in his Political Songs. . . John to Edward II, 1839, p. 155, and by Boddeker, 
Altengl. Dichtungen, p. 107. 

Of the poem two recensions are known, in MSS Brit.Mus.Harley 367 and 
Harley 542. Both volumes are miscellaneous collections, the latter written for the 
most part in the tiny needle-script of John Stow (died 1605) and the other com- 
.posed of papers of Stow’s age or later. Stow’s own copy, here printed, names 
no author; but in his Survey of London he gives a synopsis of part of it and at- 
.tributes it to Lydgate; see the ed. of the Survey by Kingsford, Oxford, 1908, i :217. 
And the recension of Harley 367, in a loose scrawl not that of Stow, is headed 
~“London Lyckpeny A Ballade compyled by Dan Iohn Lydgate monke of Bery 
-about . . . yeres agoe, and now newly ouersene and amended.” A blank is 
left by the scribe before the word yeres. Both recensions were printed parallel 
by me in Anglia 20 :404-420 (1898), with the suggestion that part at least of the 
“amended” condition of the Harley 367 text was its change of the eight-line stanza 
as copied by Stow to the seven-line stanza. I also seconded the rejection of the 
-poem from the Lydgate canon, made by ten Brink in a note to vol. ii of his History 
of English Literature. 

But the Harley 367 version, which is in its own heading stated to be an al- 
teration from Lydgate, has been many times printed as his:—by Strutt in Horda 
Angelcynnan, London, 1775-6; by Hughson in his ‘London,’ 1805, ii:124-7; by 
Sir Harris Nicolas in his Chronicle of London, 1827, appendix; by Halliwell in his 
ed. of Lydgate’s Minor Poems, 1840; by Gilfillan in his Specimens of the Less- 
Known British Poets, Edinburgh, 1860, 1:49; by Henry Morley in his Shorter Eng- 
lish Poems, 1876-82, p. 53; by Skeat in his Specimens of Engl. Lit. 1394-1579, 
fifth ed. Oxford, 1890; by H. M. Fitzgibbon in Early Engl. Poetry, London, 1887 ; 
by Bronson in his Old and Middle Engl. Poems, 1910, pp. 166-69. The Harley 
542 recension, that for which we have Stow’s assertion of Lydgate’s authorship, 
was printed by Nicolas as above, by me as stated, and by Sir Frederick Bridge in 
his Old Cryes of London, London, 1921, pp. 16-20. 

Since the appearance of the two texts in Anglia, there has been some ten- 
dency to reject the poem from the Lydgate canon, notably in Dr. MacCracken’s 
introd. to his volume of Lydgate’s Minor Poems, EETS 1911; but the earlier 
formula is followed by Saintsbury in his Engl. Prosody, i1:225, by the Cambridge 


[237] 


238 ANONYMOUS 


Hist. of Eng. Lit. ii:228, by Courthope in his Hist. Eng. Poetry, i:326, and by 


the New Eng. Dict. s. v. common pleas. 


Halliwell meddled with the title, changing it to London Lackpenny. Skeat 
corrected this “popular etymology”, but it reappears in Courthope and in Compton- 
Ricketts’ London Life of Yesterday, p. 88. Skeat compared James Howell’s Lon- 
dinopolis, 1657, where it is said that London is called Lickpenny, just as Paris is 
called Pickpurse, because of its expensiveness. 

The text is discussed by J. H. Kern in Neophilologus iii :286-300. 


london licpenye / 


In london there I was bent 

I saw my selfe, where trouthe shuld be a 
teynte 

fast to westminstar ward I went 

to a man of lawe, to make my complaynt 

I sayd for maris love, that holy seynt 5 

have pity on the powre, that would pro- 
cede 

I would gyve sylvar, but my purs is faynt 

‘ for lacke of money, I may not spede / 


Z 
As I thrast thrughe out the thronge 
amonge them all, my hode was gonn 10 
netheles I let not longe, 
to kyngs benche tyll I come 
by fore a juge I kneled anon 
I prayd hym for gods sake he would take 
hede 
full rewfully to hym I gan make my 
mone 15 
for lacke of money I may not spede / 


benethe hym sat clerks, a great rowt 

fast they writen by one assent 

there stode vp one, and cryed round 
about 

Richard Robert and one of Kent 20 

I wist not wele what he ment 

He cried so thike there in dede 

there were stronge theves shamed & shent 

but they that lacked money mowght not 
spede / 


vnto the comon place y yowde thoo 25 
where sat one with a sylken houde 
I dyd hym reverence as me ought to do 
I tolde hym my case, as well as I coude 
_and seyd all my goods by nowrd and by 
sowde 
*I am defrawdyd with great falshed 30 


he would not geve me a momme of his 
mouthe 
for lake of money, I may not spede / 


*Then I went me vnto the Rollis 


before the clerks of the chauncerie 
there were many qui tollis 35 
but I herd no man speke of me 

before them I knelyd vpon my kne 


-shewyd them myne evidence & they be- 


gan to reade 
they seyde trewer things might there 
nevar be 


‘but for lacke of money I may not 


spede / 40 


In westminster hall I found one 

went in a longe gowne of ray 

I crowched I kneled before them anon 

for marys love of helpe I gan them pray 

as he had be wrothe, he voyded away 45 

bakward, his hand he gan me byd 

I wot not what thou menest gan he say 

ley down sylvar, or here thow may not 
spede / 7 


In all westminstar hall I could find nevar 
a one 

that for me would do, thowghe I shulde 
dye 50 


-wtout be dores, were flemings grete woon 


vpon me fast they gan to cry 
and sayd mastar what will ye copen or by 


fine felt hatts, spectacles for to rede 


of this gay gere, a great cause why 55 
for lake of money I might not spede / 


8 
Then to westminster gate y went 
when the sone was at highe prime 
Cokes to me, they toke good entent 
called me nere, for to dyne 60 
and proferyd me good brede ale & wyne 


LONDON LICKPENNY 239 


a fayre clothe they began to sprede 
rybbes of befe, bothe fat and fine 
but for lacke of money I might not 
spede / 
9 


In to london I gan me hy 

of all the lond it bearethe the prise 

hot pescods,one gan cry 
‘strabery rype,and chery in the ryse 

one bad me come nere and by some spice 
pepar and saffron they gan me bede 70 
clove, grayns, and flowre of rise 

for lacke of money I might not spede / 


10 


-Then into Chepe I gan me drawne 

where I sawe stond moche people 

one bad me come ner, and by fine cloth of 
lawne 

paris thred, Coton, and vmple 

I seyde there vpon I could no skyle 

I am not wont there to in dede 

one bad me by an hewre, my hed to hele 

for lake of money I might not spede / 80 


11 


Then went I forth by london stone 

Thrwghe out all canywike strete 

-drapers to me they called anon 

grete chepe of clothe, they gan me hete 

then come there one, and cried hot shepes 
fete 

Risshes faire & grene, an othar began to 
grete 

both melwell and makarell I gan mete 

but for lacke of money I myght not 
spede / 


12 


Then I hied me into estchepe 

one cried ribes of befe, and many a pie 90 

pewtar potts they clatteryd on a heape 

ther was harpe pipe and sawtry 

ye by cokke, nay by cokke some began to 
cry 

some sange of Jenken and Julian, to get 
them selvs mede 

full fayne I wold hadd of that mynstralsie 

but for lacke of money I cowld not 
spede / 


13 


Into Cornhill anon I yode 
where is moche stolne gere amonge 


‘I saw wher henge myne owne hode 


that I had lost in westminstar amonge be 
throng r00 

then I beheld it with lokes full longe 

I kenned it as well as I dyd my crede 

to by myne owne hode agayne, me thought 
it wrong 

but for lacke of money I might not 
spede / 

14 

Then came the taverner,and toke (me) 
by pe sleve 105 

and seyd ser a pint of wyn would yow 
assay 

syr quod I it may not greve 

for a peny may do no more then it may 

I dranke a pint, and therefore gan pay 

sore a hungred away I yede 110 

for well london lykke peny for ones & 
eye 

for lake of money I may not spede / 


15 


Then I hyed me to byllingesgate 

and cried wagge wagge gow hens 

I praye a barge man for gods sake 115 

that they would spare me myn expens 

he sayde ryse vp man,and get the hens 

what wenist thow I will do on be my 
almes dede 

here skapethe no man, by nethe ij pens 

for lacke of money I myght not spede / 


16 


Then I conveyed me into Kent I2I 
for of the law would I medle no more 
by caws no man to me would take entent 


‘I dight me to the plowe, even as I ded be- 


fore 


‘Ihesus save london, that in bethelem 


was bore 125 
and every trew man of law god graunt 
hym souls med 
and they that be other, god theyr state 
restore 
for he that lackethe money, wt them he 
shall not spede / 
Explicet london lykke peny / 


THE LIBEL OF ENGLISH POLICY: 
Lines 1-563 


This “libel”, or “little book”, of English policy, was written by an unknown 
hand soon after 1436. The copies of it thus far listed are orthographically poor, 
full of errors and variants; they differ also somewhat in length, the text of Bod. 
Laud 704 having 1156 lines, but others less. A marked difference among the 
thirteen (or fourteen) known MSS! is in the stanzas of epilogue. One type of 
this epilogue is addressed to Lord Hungerford, i.e., Walter baron Hungerford, who 
was prominent in the royal council from 1426 to 1449; it is found in three MSS 
and in the print by Hakluyt, 1599, from a text not now known but apparently bet- 
ter than the surviving copies. This recension was printed, from Laud 704, by 
Wright in his Political Songs and Poems, 1859-61, ii:157-205. Wright’s text was 
revised and annotated by W. Hertzberg, with an introduction by R. Pauli, Leipzig, 
1878; but this edition standardizes the spelling and emends freely. The other 
epilogue, also of two stanzas, is addressed to three persons, “bishop and yerle and 
baron plentivous”, no names being given; a copy is printed in the Notes below. 
Another difference between the two recensions is found in line 9; the Laud MS 
there says of the emperor Sigismund “whyche yet regneth”, while the later re- 
cension reads “which late regned” or “of high renowne”. As Sigismund died in 
December 1437, and as the text of both recensions alludes to the attack on Calais 
by the duke of Burgundy in 1436 and to the taking of Harfleur in the same year, 
we can date the Laud type of text very closely; but there is as yet no means of 
dating the other recension. Sir George Warner, in his critical edition of the poem, 
considers that it cannot be separated from the earlier form of text by any such 
interval as Hertzberg conjectured, but probably followed soon. 

The poem, written in five-beat coupiets, is arranged in twelve chapters of 
unequal length, with a stanzaic prologue and epilogue. Certain of the chapters 
list the “commoditees” of Spain, Portugal, Brittany, Scotland, Hainault, Genoa, 
Ireland, etc., each description leading to an urgent demand on Government to con- 
trol all this sea-borne trade bound for the marts of Flanders past English shores. 
Illustrative anecdotes are interspersed,—Edward III’s dealings with the duke of 
Brittany, the sharp practices of Venetian woolbuyers, Hankyn Lyons the pirate, 
the wisdom of King Edgar, the prowess of Henry the Fifth. The writer’s recur- 
rent and constantly emphasized themes are the need for English sovereignty of 
the Channel or “narrow sea”, and the need for stringent laws controlling foreign 
woolbuyers in England. 

Great difficulties attend the attempt to generalize about English commerce and 
industry in the fifteenth century. Besides the lack of available information on 
many points, there is the contradiction between records existing for one part of the 
country and those remaining for others. It would seem, to steer a middle course, 
that the English agricultural districts were in this period depressed, often impov- 
erished, while many of the towns, especially those engaged in the cloth trade, were 


*Bodl. Laud 704, Pepys 1461 at Magdalene College Cambridge; two copies in Brit. Mus. 
Harley 78 (the second imperfect at close); Harley 271, Harley 4011 impf. at close; Brit. 
Mus. Adds. 40673 and Cotton Vitellius E x, the latter damaged by fire; Bodl. Rawlinson 
poetry 32 and All Souls College, Oxford, ciii; codices of the Cowper and of the Gurney 
collections ; the former Phillipps MS 8299, now no. 140 of the Huntington Library, California. 
Add the MS back of the Hakluyt print. 


[ 240 ] 


THE LIBEL OF ENGLISH POLICY 241 


rapidly rising into wealth and power. The way in which the busy East and South 
coast towns, with their foreign commerce and their active manufacturing gilds, 
adopted the system of money payments and of credit, organized for overseas trade, 
and made themselves heard in Parliament, is a world removed from the situation 
of the stagnant country manor, its owner unable to collect his dues, harassed by 
the difficulty of procuring labor, and often semi-isolated by the badness of the 
roads. It is with the prosperous trading towns that the Libel of English Policy 
deals; the voice of the rimester is that of the ambitious thriving exporter, the 
eager partisan of “protection” and of the sovereignty of the narrow sea. 

England had long been aware of her advantage of position, lying just off 
the French and Flemish coasts, at the throat of the water route from Mediter- 
ranean countries to Flanders and to the Baltic. She had, however, made no effort 
to assert this advantage beyond the theoretical assumption to herself of “the sov- 
ereignty of the sea”. This “sovereignty” seems to have consisted in requiring 
salute from all foreign shipping in the Channel to any English craft there encoun- 
tered, and was not carried to exaction of tribute such as Venice imposed upon all 
shipping in the Adriatic, as Genoa sought to demand from craft entering the 
Ligurian Sea, or as Denmark and Sweden practiced in the Baltic. England did 
not even prohibit the Dutch from fishing freely in the Channel waters, until Stuart 
times ; and although in 1420 such restraining legislation was petitioned for, Henry 
V refused. 

One reason for this abstinence may have been England’s lack of power to en- 
force the claim, and another may have been her unwillingness to antagonize nations 
who were not only her customers, but in large measure the carriers of her foreign 
trade. At the opening of the fifteenth century England was still far behind Flan- 
ders, Genoa, Venice, and other countries in her shipping. The bulk of what 
reached her shores and of what was carried away,—wine, silks, cloth, oil, spices 
as imports, and raw wool, tin, lead, etc., as exports—came and went in foreign 
bottoms. English merchants visited the great foreign fairs, but the volume of 
trade thus obtained did not induce them to build and man their own ships for 
transportation. Until the Hundred Years’ War broke out, England as a market 
was relatively unimportant, and her traders betook themselves for custom to the 
fairs or “marts” of Burgundy and Champagne. 

These fairs are, with the “staple” system of English exports and other re- 
strictions on international commerce, the marked peculiarities of medieval trade. 
Until late in the Middle Ages the volume of trade in any one place was not constant 
enough to warrant the permanent domicile of merchants there. Hence the insti- 
tution of fairs or marts, sometimes under the shadow of a renowned saint or relic, 
sometimes determined by a convenient road or river, but usually coinciding with 
Church festivals so as to catch the stream of pilgrims, and always “sublet” by 
some seigneur to a town or a monastic brotherhood, for value received. These 
latter in their turn leased the booths, arranged hostel for the travellers, and col- 
lected dues on the sales. The fairs lasted from eight days to eight weeks, and filled 
the year in pretty regular sequence. Thus, Troyes had a summer fair and a winter 
fair ; and in the intervening time, from Sept. 14 to Nov. 2, was held the fair of St. 
Ayoul; from the date of the Troyes winter fair’s closing, Jan. 1, to the Wednes- 
day before mid-Lent, extended the fair of Lagny; and that of Bar followed on the 
six weeks assigned to Lagny, etc. The most important French fairs lay along a 
topographical line from Provence to Flanders through the valleys of the Rhone, 


242 ANONYMOUS 


Sadne, Somme, Oise, Seine; here were the towns of Montpellier, Nimes, Lyon, 
Besancon, Troyes, Paris, Beauvais, Arras, and Calais. To these centers streamed 
at the appointed time the trade of Europe, moving on to the next fair northward 
or southward as the merchant’s advantage might dictate. At the greater fairs were 
to be seen not only Northerners with their furs, Englishmen with their wool, and 
Provencals with their wines and cheeses, but Lombards with their silks, Spaniards 
with their leather, Genoese with armor and swords, Venetians with jewels and 
laces, Germans with linens, Orientals with dyestuffs, spices, coffee, drugs, and 
slaves. Both geographical and political position favored the county of Champagne, 
where lay several of these towns, down to the fourteenth century. Such an influx 
of Mediterranean and Flemish merchants was made possible not only by the great 
rivers, but by the political neutrality of the counts of Champagne; and when, by 
the marriage of its heiress Jeanne to Philip IV of France in the early fourteenth 
century, the county was drawn into the quarrels of the Domain Royal, its com- 
mercial prestige declined with the departure of its peace. No part of France, not 
even Normandy, suffered more than Champagne and Burgundy during the Hun- 
dred Years’ War; and long before that war was at its height the fairs of eastern 
France had yielded priority to those of the Low Countries. Bruges, and later 
Antwerp, became the principal marts of Western Europe, and to them, as to other 
Flemish towns now rising into prominence, went the stream of Mediterranean com- 
merce. 

That stream was no longer overland ; the war-conditions of the French valleys 
forbade. The trade route north and south became a sea-route, which, of course, 
traversed the English Channel; but off the coasts of France and of the Low Coun- 
tries there raged all through the later Middle Ages violent and continual sea-war- 
fare. It was not so much by bands of pirates fighting for their own hand, as in 
the North Sea, that the Channel and the adjacent waters were infested, but by 
the plague of privateering, of warfare licensed by royal letters of reprisal for 
injury already received. Overtly the rulers of France, of England, of the Low 
Countries, framed treaties covering commercial matters and entered formal legal 
protest against any breach of maritime law by their neighbors; but covertly they 
issued to their belligerent subjects these documentary permissions to obtain a 
revenge which the law’s delay denied. As Malo expresses it in his Les Corsaires 
Dunkerquois, “in spite of the agreements almost yearly between English and Flem- 
ings, Flemings and Dutch, in spite of the alliances between France and Burgundy, 
the sea remained the theatre of incessant warfare, of a legalized brigandage.” 
Merchant ships sailed with convoys, heavily armed, from La Rochelle, from Hull, 
or from Bruges; but the corsair fleet swooped out of St. Malo or from behind the 
dunes of the Zwyn and fell upon the laden keels. The records of the time are full 
of petitions for indemnification, of narratives of cruelty such as the wholesale 
killing of crews or the abandoning of them in small boats, foodless and waterless, 
far from land. The coast towns of France and of Southern England were ex- 
posed to the descent of pirates, licensed or unlicensed ; some communes maintained 
guards in their harbors; and the sea-robbers were so well-informed and so bold 
that when Henry IV crossed the outer Thames in 1405, he narrowly escaped cap- 
ture, although he was convoyed by ships of war. Part of his retinue and of his 
baggage was indeed taken. 

The author of the Libel speaks of this piracy or privateering in his third 
and fourth chapters and in a few lines devoted to Hankyn Lyons, the French sea- 


THE LIBEL OF ENGLISH POLICY 243 


marauder. But his main interest is elsewhere. He insists upon the need for Eng- 
lish dominance of the Channel, for acquiring a naval supremacy so evident that 
every nation shall be obliged to cultivate English friendship lest it be forbidden 
passage through English waters, and also upon the need for retaliating against 
foreign exactions by placing restraints on foreign merchants similar to the re- 
straints imposed abroad on English merchants. 

The whole medieval trade between England and the Continent was conducted 
under restrictions. In the first place, the English sovereign, in order to collect 
the export duty on the wool which was England’s main article of commerce, named 
certain ports as licensed for the shipment, and stationed his collectors there. Ed- 
ward III, by his Ordinance of the Staple, 1353, specified Newcastle, York, Lincoln, 
Norwich, Westminster, Canterbury, Chichester, Winchester, Exeter, Bristol, as 
“staple towns” ; each inland town of this list had its port appointed, Hull for York, 
Yarmouth for Norwich, Sandwich for Canterbury, etc. To these towns came the 
foreign buyers of wool, bringing their money or their goods for exchange, in a 
tide which grew steadily greater after the decay of the fairs of Champagne, and 
which continued to flow alongside the prosperity of the fairs of Flanders. What 
vexes our author is that the visiting merchant is not held to residence in one place, 
obliged to “go to host” ; and also that such a merchant is not compelled to keep his 
stay in England within narrow limits such as were imposed upon the English 
merchant abroad. There had been from Edward I to Henry VI a series of enact- 
ments directed to control of the visiting alien; but these had fallen into desuetude 
or had been evaded; the Libel indignantly demands their enforcement, and in a 
marginal note beside lines 474 ff. of our manuscript some scribe or reviser com- 
ments with disgust on the “wyles and giles” by which the laws were subverted. 

Our “poet” must have had a strong personal interest in the wool trade, his 
country’s greatest commercial activity. His indignation has often the ring of 
individual as much as of national feeling; compare for instance his description of 
the double-profit system practiced by the Venetians on the commodity and on the 
exchange. Indeed, despite its limping doggerel expression, the work is a human 
document throughout. There is a French prose Débat des Hérauts, written per- 
haps a score of years later than the Libel, 1453-1461, in which the heralds of France 
and of England argue before Dame Prudence the claims of their respective coun- 
tries to honor ; but that essay is much more general in its terms than is the Libel, 
lacks its vivacity, and yields the student no such amount of information. The Libel 
is a poor enough thing as literature, the average product of the fifteenth-century 
tendency to put into verse any kind of information, were it on husbandry, on table 
manners, on cookery, on alchemy; but as a revelation of national and personal 
egoism it has the passion of an Agincourt ballad. 

It was printed, from an unknown MS, by Hakluyt as below, and from Laud 
704 by Wright as mentioned ante ; Wright was revised by Hertzberg, and Hakluyt’s 
text is reprinted by Benham, Univ. of Washington Press, Seattle, 1922. There 
is a bit of Wright’s text repr. in A. S. Cook’s Literary Mid. Eng. Reader, Bos- 
ton, 1915. A critical edition by Sir George Warner, Oxford Univ. Press, is dated 
1926. In Brit. Mus. Lansdowne 796 is a condensed rewriting of the Libel into 
quatrains ; this was printed by Wright in his Polit.Poems, ii:282-7. The work 
has been freely used by historians of English commerce. 


244 ANONYMOUS 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST X 


Débat des hérauts . . 


. etc., SATF 1871 (see p. 219 here). 


Fortescue, Sir John (d. 1476), is reputed author of a brief prose work on the Com- 
odytes of Englond, printed with his life and works, London, 1869, i:549-554. 
“Commodities” to Fortescue and his age meant “advantages”; and he enumerates 
England’s rivers, havens, and minerals, besides mentioning her soil as good for 
sheep and emphasizing that her people are better fed and better clothed than any 
other nation’s. When listing the exports of various countries, he remarks that 
the goods of all nations are “uttered” in Flanders. 

Forrest’s Pleasant Poesye of Princelie Practise, 1548, deals among other things with 
the wool trade; see extracts from it as appendix to Herrtage’s ed. of Starkey’s 
Dialogue, EETS 1878, under title England in the Reign of Henry VIII. 

Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the Eng- 
lish Nation, 1598-1600. Text of our poem, repr. as above. 

Lydgate’s Horse, Goose, and Sheep, ed. Degenhart, Leipzig, 1900, discourses, 288 ff., 
on the importance of the sheep to England. 

Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik gegen Ende des Mittelalters, etc., Leipzig, 1881. 

Cunningham, W., Growth of English Industry and Commerce, 3d ed., Cambridge, 1896. 

Huvelin, Essai historique sur le droit des marchés et des foires, Paris, 1897. 

Fulton, T. W., The Sovereignty of the Sea, Edinburgh, 1911. 


Malo, Les corsairs dunkerquois, Paris, 1913. 


Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, Oxford, 1913. 
Warner, ed. The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, Oxford, 1926; see introd. 


[MS Brit. Mus. Harley 4011, fol. 120a] 


HERE BEGYNNETHE THE PROLOGE OF THE LIBELLE OF ENGLISSH POLICIE EXHORTYNG 
ALL ENGLONDE TO KEPE THE SEE ENVYROUN AND NAMLY THE NAROW SEE, 
SHEWYNG WHAT PROFITE COMETH THEREOF AND ALSO WHAT 
WORSHIP AND SALUACION TO ENGLOND 


The trew processe . of Englissh policye 

Off outward to kepe this lond in rest 

Off oure Englond that no man may denye 

Men say of sothe this is the best 

Who sailethe Southe Northe Est or 
West 5 

Cherissh marchauntes kepe the admyralte 

That we be maisters of the narow See 


2 


ffor Sygismond the grete Emperoure 
Whiche reigned whan he was in this lond 
With kyng Henry the fifte prince of 
honour 10 
Here moche glorye as hym thought he 
fond 
A myghty lond whiche had take on hond 
To werre in ffraunce and make mortalite 
And were ever wele kept rounde aboute 
the See 


On the MS see the Notes, p. 478. 


3 


And to the kyng thus he seid my brother 

Whan he parseived Caleys and Dover 16 

Of all your townes to chese of one and 
other 

Kepe the see and sone to come over 

And werre outward and your ream to re- 
cover 

Kepe this tow townes sir to your maieste 

As your twayn eyen kepe wele the narowe 
see 21 

4 

ffor if this see be kept in tyme of werre 

Who can here passe without Daunger or 
wo 


Who may ascape who may myschief de- 

ferre 
Whan marchaundise may not foreby 
Oo 25 


gs 
ffor nedis must than take trusse every fo 
ffaundres Spayn and all other trust to me 


THE LIBEL OF ENGLISH POLICY 245 


Or els hyndred are the(i) for this narow 
See 
5 


Therfore I cast me by a litelle writyng 
To shew at eye this conclusion 30 
ffor conscience and for myn Acquytyng 
Ayenst god and ayenst Abusion 

And cowardise and to our enemyes con- 


fusion 

ffor -iiij- thynges oure noble sheweth to 
me 

Kyng:shipp: Swerd-and power of the 
See 35 


6 
Where ben our shippes wher ben thei be 
come 
Our enmyes bid vs for the shipp set a 
shepe 
Allas our rule halteth it is be nome 
Who dare wele sey that lordship shold 


take kepe 
I wille assay though myn hert begynne to 
wepe 40 


To do this werke yf we wille ever thee 
ffor verray shame to kepe the narow see 


7 


Shall ony prynce what so be his name 

Whiche hathe nobles moche like to oures 

Be lordes of the See as flemynges to our 
blame 45 

Stoppe vs: take vs- and so make fade the 
floures 

Of Englissh astate and disteyn oure 
honoures 

ffor cowardise allas it shold so be 

pe ctiore I begynne to write of this narow 

ee 


OFF THE COMMEDITEES OF SPAYN AND OF 
FFLAUNDRES 


Here begynneth the profites in certayn 50 

With commoditees that comethe out of 
Spayn 

And marchaundise who so wille wete 
what it is 

Ben ffyges raysyns wyne Bastard and 
datis 

Likorise Sivile oyle and Grayn 

White castell Sope and wexe certayn 55 

Iren wolle wadmole Gotefelle and kid- 
felle also 

ffor poynt makers full nedfull ben thei 
two 


Saffron Quyksiluer whiche Spaynyssh 
marchaundye 

Is in to flaundres shipped full craftely 

Vnto Bruges as to her staple fayre 60 

To haue at Scluse her haven to repaire 

Whiche is cleped the Swyn theire shippes 
gidyng 

Where many a vesselle are bydyng 

But thise marchauntees wt thaire shippes 
grete 

And such chaffare as thei bye and gete 65 

By the waies must nedes take on hond 

By the costes to passe of our Englond 

Betwixe Dover and Caleis this is no 
doute 

Who can wele els suche matirs bryng 
aboute 

And thise seid marchauntes (dis )charged 
be 70 

Of marchaundise in ffaundres nere the 
See 

Than thei ben charged agayn with mar- 
chaundie 

That to flaundres longeth full richely 

ffyne cloth of Ipre that named is better 
than oures 

Clothe of Curryk fyne clothe of all col- 
oures 75 

Moche ffustian and also lynnen clothe 

But ye fflemynges though ye be wroth 

The grete substaunce of your cloth atte 
fulle 

The clothe ye make of our Englissh 
wolle 

Than may it not synke in mannes 


brayn 80 
But that it must thise marchaundise of 
Spayn 


Bothe out and in by oure costes passe 
He that seith nay in witte is like an asse 
Thus yf the see were kept I dare wele 


sayn 
We shold haue pease wt the growndes 
twayn 85 


ffor Spayn and fflaundres is as eche other 
brother 
And neither may live welle with outen 


other 
They may not live to maynteyn theire 
degrees 
Wtouten our Englissh commoditees 
Wolle and tynne of our Englond 90 


Susteyneth comons fflemynges I vndir- 
stond 
Than yf Englond wold his wolle restrayn 


246 ANONYMOUS 


ffro fflaundres this foloweth in certayn 

fflaundres of nede must with vs haue 
pease 

Or els it is distroied with outen lease 95 

Also yf fflaundres thus Distroied be 

Some marchaundise of Spayn wolle never 
thee 

ffor distroied it is and as in chief 

The wolle of Spayn it cometh not to preef 

But yf it be tosed and menged wele 100 

Amonge Englissh wolle the gretter dele 

ffor Spaynyssh wolle in fflaundres Draped 
is 

And ever hathe be that men hathe mynd 


Iwis 

And yit wolle is one of the chief mar- 
chaundie 

That longeth to Spayn who so list 
aspie 105 


It is of litell valew trust vnto me 

Wt Englissh wolle but yf it menged be 

Thus yf the see be kept than harken hedir 

Yf thise two londes come not to gedir 

So that the fflete of fflaundres passe 
nought II0 

That in the narow see it be not brought 

Into the Rochell to seke the fumouse 
wyne 

Ne into Bretons baye for salt so fyne 

What is than Spayn what is fflaundres 


also 
As who seith naught the thrifte is all 
ago 115 


ffor the litell lond of fflaundres is 

But a staple to other londes Iwis 

And all that groweth in ffaundres grayn 
or sede 

May not a monthe fynde hem mete and 
brede 

What hathe than fflaundres be fflemynges 
leef or lothe 120 

But a litell madder and fflemyssh clothe 

By drapyng of our wolle in substaunce 

Liven her comons this is her governaunce 

With out whiche thei may not live at ease 

Thus must thei sterve or with vs haue 
pease 125 


OFF THE COMMODITEES OF PORTYNGALE 


The marchaundise also of portyngale 

Into Dyvers londes come to sale 

Portyngalers wt vs haue truse in honde 

Whos marchaundise commeth moche in 
to Englond 


Thei ben our ffrendes wt thaire commod- 
itees 130 
And we Englisshe passen into her coun- 
trees 
Her lond hathe Oyle- Wyne: osay - wexe 
‘and grayn 
fiigges : Raisyns:- hony: and Cordewayn 
Datis: salt hides- and suche marchaundye 
And yef thei wold to fflaundres passe fore 
bye 135 
Thei shold not be suffred ones ne twyes 
ffor supportyng of oure cruell enemyes 
That is to sey flemynges wt her gile 
ffor chaungeable the(i) are in litell while 
Than I conclude by resons many moo 140 
Yeff we suffred neither frende ne foo 
What for enemye and supportyng 
Passe ffore by vs in tyme of werryng 
Sithe oure frendis wold (not) ben in 


cause 
Off our hyndryng yef reson lede this 
clause 145 


Than nedes ffro fflaundres pease shold 
be to vs sought 

And other landes shold seche pease doute 
it nought 

ffor faundres is staple as men telle me 

Of all nacions of cristente 


OFF THE COMMODITEES OF LITELL 
BRETAIGNE 


Furthermore to write I am fayn 150 

Somewhat spekyng of litell Bretaigne 

The commoditees therof is and was 

Salte- wynes:creste clothe: and Canvas 

And the lond of fflaundres sikerly 

Is the staple of theire marchaundie 155 

Whiche marchaundise may not passe 
away 

But by the costes of Englond this is no 
nay 

And of this Bretaigne who so the trouthe 
beleves 

Are the grettest robbers and theves 

That haue ben in the see many a yere 160 

That oure marchauntes haue bought all 
to dere 

ffor thei haue take notable good of oures 

On this seid see thise seid pillours 

Called (of) Seint malouse and els where 

Whiche to their Duke none obeisaunce 


wold bere 165 
With such coloures we haue ben hyndred 
sore 


THE LIBEL OF ENGLISH POLICY 247 


And fayned pease is called no werre here- 
fore 

Thus thei haue ben in dyuerse costes 
many 

Of our Englond mo than reherse can I 

In Norfolke costes and in other places 
aboute 170 

Robbed brent and slayn by many a route 

And thei haue also (raunsomed) towne 


to towne 

That into regions of bost haue ronne the 
sowne 

Whiche haue ben ruthe to this ream and 
shame 

Thei that the see shold kepe are moche 
to blame 175 


ffor Bretaigne is of easy reputacion 
And Seint Malouse turneth hem to repro- 
bacion 
A STORY OF KYNG EDWARDES ORDENAUNCE 
FOR BRETAIGNE 


Here bryng I in a story to me lent 

That a good Squyer in tyme of parlia- 
ment 

Toke vnto me wele written in a 
scrowe 

That I comoned with both wt hye and 
lowe 

Of whiche all men Accorded vnto one 

That it was done not many yeres Agone 

But whan that noble Kyng Edward the 
thirde 

Reigned in grace right thus it be tid 185 

For he had A maner Iolesye 

To his marchauntes and loved hem hertlye 

He felt wele the waies the rules of the 
see 

Wherby marchauntes myght haue pros- 


perite 
Ther(for) Harflete and Houndflete did 
he make 190 


And grete werres that tyme were vndir 
take 

Bytwene the kyng and the Duke of 
Bretaigne 

Atte last to falle to pease bothe were 
fayn 

Vpon whiche made by convencion 

Our marchauntes made hem _ redy 
bown 195 

Toward Bretaigne wt theire marchaundie 

Wenyng hem frendes and thedir yode 
boldly 

But sone Anon oure marchauntes were 
Itake 


And we sped neuer the bettere for truses 
sake 

They lost her goodes her money and here 
spendyng 200 

Than thei complayned hem vnto the kyng 

Than woxe the kyng wrothe and to the 
Duke sent 

And complayned how suche harme was 
hent 

Vndir convencion and pease made so re- 
fused 

The Duke sent Ayene and hym ex- 
cused 205 

Rehersyng that the mounte of seint 
Michell 

Nor seint Malous wold never A dele 

Be subiecte vndir his governaunce 

Ne be vndir his obeisaunce 

And so with out hym thei did that 
dede 210 

Amendes he wold none make he seide 

Wherfor the kynge in hast sette a Iuge- 
ment 

Wtout callyng of any parliament 

Or grete tary to take longe Avise 

To fortefye anon he did devise 215 

Our Englissh townes that is to sey 

Dertmouth Plymouthe and Fowey 

And yaf hem help and notable pusaunce 

Wt Insistence to sette hem in govern- 
aunce 

Vpon litell Bretaigne for to werre 220 

Than good see men wold not deferre 

But bete hem home that thei myght not 
route 

Toke prisoners And lerned hem to loute 

Than the Duke in like wise 

Wrote to the Kynge for the truse 225 

The Kyng Aunswered how his mayne 
wode 

Wt grete power were passed over the 
flode 

To distroie the Dukes londe 

Ayenst his wille I vndirstonde 

And whan the Duke say how that townes 
thre 230 

Shold haue distroied his countre 

He than made suerte trew and not fals 

ffor mount Michell and seint Malous als 

And for all the parties of litell Bretaigne 

Whiche to obeye as seid was were not 
fayne 235 

So that all the lyf (tyme) of the kynge 

Marchauntes had pease wt out warryng 


248 ANONYMOUS 


He made a statute for lombardes in this 
lond 

That thei shold in no wise take on hond 

Here to enhabite to charge and dis- 
charge 240 

But-xl-daies no more had thei large 

This good kynge of suche Apreef 

Kept his marchauntes in the see fro 
myschief 


OF THE COMODITEES OF SCOTLOND AND 
DRAPYNG OF HER WOLLE IN 
FFLAUNDRES 


Also over all Scotland the commoditees 
‘Are felles hides and of wolle the flees 245 
All this must passe by vs away 

In to fflaundres by Englond this is no 


nay 

And all her wolle is draped for to selle 

In the townes of poperyng and of Belle 

Which the Duke of Gloucestre in grete 
Ire 250 

ffor her falshede sete vpon a fire 

And yit thei of Belle and Poperyng 

Coude never drape her wolle for any 
thyng 

But yef thei had englissh wolle wt all 

Our goodly wolle it is so generalle 255 

Nedfull to hem of Spayn and Scotland 
als 

And other costes this (sentence) is not 
fals 

Ye worthi marchauntes I do it vpon yow 

That this is trew ye wote wele how 

ffor the staple of that marchaundie 260 

Of Scotland is fflaundres truly 

Than the Scottes ben charged at eye 

Out of fflaundres wt litell mercerye 

And grete plente of haberdasshe ware 

And (half ther shippes) wt cart wheles 


bare 265 
And (with) Barowes are laden in sub- 
staunce 
Thus must rude ware ben her cheve- 
saunce 


So may thei not forbere this fflemyssh 
lond 

Therfore yef we wold manly take on hond 

To kepe the see fro fflaundres and fro 
Spayn 270 

And fro Scotland and fro litell Bretaigne 

We shold right sone haue pease for all 
her bostes 

ffor thei must nedes passe by oure Eng- 
lisshe costes 


OF THE COMMODITEES OF PRUCE AND HIGH 
DUCHE MEN AND ESTERLYNGES 
[48 lines of Harl. 4011 are now omitted 
in this print. The passage in other MSS 
has 54 lines.] 
OF bE COMMODITEES OF PE JANUAYSE & 
HER GRETE CARRIKES 
The Januays comen in sondry wise 
Into this lond wt dyuerse marchaundise 
In grete Carrikes arraied wt outen lak 
With clothes of gold and Siluer & pepir 
blak 325 
Thei brynge with hem waad grete plente 
Wolle oyle waad asshen by vessels in the 
see 
Coton Roche Alom and good gold of 
Jean 
And thei ben charged with wolle ayen 
And wollen clothe of oures of coloures 
all 330 
And thei aventure as ofte it dothe befalle 
Into ffaundres wt suche thynges as thei 
bye 
That is theire chief staple sikerly 
And yef thei wold be our (fulle) enmyes 
Thei shold not passe our stremys Iwise 
OFF THE COMMODITEES OF THE VENYSIANS 
AND FFLORENTYNES WT THEIRE GALIES 
The grete Galeys of venyse and fflorence 
Be wele laden with thynges of compla- 
cience 
All Spicery and Grocers ware 
Wt swete wynes all maner of chaffare 
Apes / Japes / and Marmesettes / 
tayled 340 
Nifles / trifles / that litell haue availed 
And other thynges whiche thei blere wt 
our eye 
Whiche thynges be not Duryng that we 
bye 
ffor moche of this chaffare that is vnstable 
Might be for born for thei ben disceiv- 
able 345 
And yitt I wene as for infirmitees 
In Englond are suche commoditees 
Wt out help of any other londe 
Whiche by witte and practik bethe I 


founde 
That all humours myght be voided 
sure 350 


Of that we gadir in our englissh cure 

That we shold haue no nede to Scamonye 

Turbit / Euforbe / Correcte / Dagardye 

Rubarbe / Sene / and yit thei bene towo 
nedfull 

But ther ben thynges also spedfull 355 


THE LIBEL OF ENGLISH POLICY 249 


That growen here as thise thynges fayned 
Lette of this matir no man be dismaied 
But that a man myght void in firmyte 
With out thise drugges fro be yonde the 


see 
And yf ther shold be except ony thyng 360 
It were but Sugre trust to my senynge 
He that trusteth not to my sentence 
Lette hym better seche experience 
In this matir I wille no ferther plese 
Who so not beleveth let hym leve and 
cease 305 
Thus thise Galeys fore theire likyng ware 
And etyng ware beren hens our best 
chaffare 
Clothe wolle and Tynne whiche as is 
seid beforn 
Out of this lond myght worse be for- 
born 
ffor eche other lond of necessite 370 
Haue grete nede to bye one of thise thre 
And we resceive for hem in to this cost 
Ware and chaffare that lightly wille be 
lost 
And wold Ihesu that our lordes wolde 
Considre this welle bothe yonge and 
olde 375 
Namly elder that haue experience 
That myght the yonger exhorte to pru- 
dence 
What harme what hurt what hyndraunce 
Is Done to vs vnto our grete grevaunce 
Of such londes and of thise nacions 380 
As experte men shew by probacions 
By writyng Are discovered our counseils 
By fals colours alway the countertails 
Of oure enemyes that dothe vs hyndryng 
Vnto oure goodes our Ream and to the 
kyng 385 
As wise men haue shewed welle at eye 
And all this is coloured by marchaundie 


AN ENSAMPLE OF A GRETE DISCEITE 
Also thei bere the gold out of this lond 
And sowketh the thrifte out of our hond 
As the waspe sowketh hony of the be 390 
So mynnyssheth our commodite 
Now wolle ye here how thei in Cottes- 

wold 
Were wonte to borow as it shold be sold 
Here wolles good as fro yere to yere 
Of clothe and tynne thei did in like 

maner 395 
And in theire Galeys shipp theire mar- 

chaundie 
Than some at venyse of hem wille it bye 


Thei vtter ther the chaffare by the peyse 

And lightly also ther thei make her reise 

And whan the goodes ben at venyse 
solde 400 

Than to cary her chaunge thei ben full 
bolde 

Into ffaundres whan thei this money haue 

Thei wille it profir their sotelte to save 

To englissh Marchauntes to yeve it out 
by eschaunge 

To be paid agayn thei make not straunge 

Here in Englond semyng for the better 

At the resceivyng and sight of lettir 

By -iiij - pens losse in the noble rounde 

That is-xii-d-losse in the goldyn 
pounde 

And yef we wille haue of payment 410 

A ffull monthe than must we assent 

To: viij -d-losse that is shillynges twayn 

In the englisshe pounde and ofte sone 
agayn 

ffor two monthes: xij-d- must hym pay 

In the englisshe pounde what it is to 
say 415 

But-iij-shillynges so that in poundes 
fele 

For hurte and harme hard it is wt hem to 
dele 

And whan englisshe marchauntes haue 
content 

This eschaunge in Englond by assent 

Than thise venysians haue in wone 420 

And fflorentynes to bere her gold sone 

Over the see into fflaundres agayn 

And thus thei live in flaundres sothe to 
sayn 

And in london with suche chevesaunce 

That men calle vsure to oure losse and 
hyndraunce 425 


ANOTHER ENSAMPLE OF A GRETE DISCEITE 
Now listen wele how thei made vs a 
baleys 
Whan thei borowed atte towne of Caleys 
As thei were wonte their wolle to hem 
lent 
ffro yere to yere thei shold make pay- 
ment 
And somtyme:ij-yere and-ij-yere 430 
This was faire lone but yit wolle ye here 
How thei to Brigges wold her wolle carry 
And for hem take payment without tary 
And selle it fast for redy money in hond 
ffor - L: pounde losse thei wold not wond 
In a thousand pounde and live therby 
Tille the day of payment easely 


250 ANONYMOUS 


Come agayn in eschaunge makyng 

ffull like vsure as men make vndirtakyng 

Than whan this payment of a thousand 
pounde 440 

Was welle content thei shold haue chaf- 
fare sounde 

Yf thei wold fro the staple fulle 

Resceive agayn-iiij- thousand pounde 
of wolle 

In Cotteswold also thei ride aboute 

All Englond and byen wt out dowte 445 

What thei list wt fredom and fraunchise 

More than we englisshe may gete in any 
wise 

But wold god that without lenger delayes 

Here galeys were vnfraught in-xl- 
dayes 

And in: xl- dayes charged agayn 450 

And that they myght be put in certayn 

To go to host as we with hem do 

It were expediente that thei did right 
so 

As we do ther yf the kyng wold it 

A what worship wold falle to englissh 
witte 455 

What profite also to our marchaundie 

Wiche wold of nede be cherisshed hert- 
lye 

I wold wete whi our navie failethe 

Whan many a foo vs atte dore assailethe 

Now thise dayes that yef ther come a 
nede 460 

What navie shold we haue it is to drede 


[12 lines omitted in this print] 


NOW TO THE PRYNCIPALL MATIR 


What reason is it that we shall go to host 

In her countrees and in this englissh 
cost 475 

They shall not so but haue more liberte 

Than we our self now also mote I the 

I wolde men shold to yiftes take none 
hede 

That letteth our thing publius for to 
spede 

ffor this we see wele every day at eye 480 

Giftes and festes stoppen our policye 

Now se that foles ben either thei or we 

But ever we haue the worse in this coun- 
tre 

Therfore lette hem vnto host go here 

Or be we fre wt hem in like manere 485 

In theire countrees and yf it wold not be 

Compelle hem vnto host and ye shall se 


Moche avauntage and moche profite arise 
Moche more than I can write in any wise 


OFF OURE DISCHARGE AND CHARGE AT HER 
MARTES 


Conseive wele here that englisshe men at 
martes 490 

Ben discharged for all her craftes and 
artes 

In the Braban of her marchaundye 

In - xiiij - daies (and) agayn hastly 

In the same - xiiij - daies are charged efte 

And yf thei abide lenger all is be refte 495 

Anon thei shold forfaite theire goodes 
alle 

Of marchaundise it shold not better falle 

And we to martes of Braban charged ben 

With englisshe clothe full goode (and 
fayre) to sen 

We ben ayene charged with mercery 500 

Haberdassh ware and wt Grocery 

To whiche Martes that englissh men calle 
faires 

Eche nacion maketh ofte her repaires 

Englissh . ffrenssh . Duche . lombardes 
and Januayes 

Cathalons thedir make her waies 505 

Scottes . Spaynardes . Irissh men ther 
abides 

Whiche grete plente bryngen of Irissh 
hides 

And I here sey that we in Braban bye 

More plente of theire marchaundye 

In comon vse than dothe all other na- 
cions 510 

This I haue herd of marchauntes rela- 
cions 

And yf the englissh be not in the martes 

Thei ben feble and as naught ben her 
partes 

ffor thei bye more and fro purse put out 

ffor marchaundise than all the other rout 

And pe see were kept pt shippes shold 
not bryng ne fecche 516 

Than the carrys wold not thedir strecche 

Than shold tho martes full evell thee 

Yif we manly kept about the see 


OFF THE COMMODITEES AND MARCHAUN- 
DISE OF BRABAN SELANDE AND HENAUDE 


The marchaundise of Braban and Seland 
Bethe madir and wad that dyers take on 

hond 521 
To dyne wt Garlik and Oynons 


THE LIBEL OF ENGLISH POLICY 251 


And Salt fyssh als for husbondes and 
comons 


But thei of Selond at Caleis bye our 
felles 

And our wolle that english men hem 
selles 525 


And the chaffare that englissh men byen 
In the martes no man may denyen 

It is nat made in Braban that countre 

It cometh out of henavde and not by the 


see 

But all by land Icaried and fro ffraunce 

ffro Burgayn Camerite Colayn in sub- 
staunce 

Therfore at martes yef ther by ony re- 
straynt 

Men seyn playnly that list no fables paynt 

Yef englissh men be with draw away 


Is grete rebuke losse and affray 535 
As though we sent in to the land of 
ffraunce 


xx - thousand men of (good) pussaunce 

To werre vnto her hyndryng multiplye 

So ben our englissh marchauntes neces- 
sarye 

Whether it be thus assay and ye schull 


weten 540 
Of men expert by whom I haue this 
writen 


ffor seid is whan this caried marchaundie 


Draweth as moche to valew sikerly 

As all the good that cometh in schippes 
thedir 

Whiche englissh men bye most and bryng 
hedir 545 

ffor her martes ben feble shame to say 

But englissh men thedir dresse her way 


A CONCLUSION OF THIS DEPENDYNG OF 
KEPYNG OF PE SEE 
Than I conclude yf men so moche be of 
lond 
Were by carres brought vnto her hond 
Were be see welle kept in govern- 
aunce 550 
Thei shold by see haue no delyueraunce 
We shold hem stoppe and hem distroye 
As prisoners we shold hem noye 
And so we shold of our cruell enemyes 
Make our frendes for fere of marchaun- 
dise 399) 
Yf thei were not suffred forto passe 
Into flaundres but we (be) fre as glasse 
And as Brasile not tough ne abidyng 
But whan grace shyneth than sone we are 
slidyng 
We wille it not resceive in any wise 560 
That maketh lust envye and Covetise 
Expounde me this and the sothe Ifynde 
Bere it away and kepe it in your mynde 


[The text continues for about 500 lines more] 


GEORGE RIPLEY: THE COMPEND OF ALCHEMY 


Preface and Prohibicio 


Of George Ripley, canon of Bridlington in Yorkshire and an alchemical writer, 
little is known but his work. His Compend of Alchemy was dedicated to Edward 
the Fourth in 1471, and in 1476 Ripley presented to Nevill archbishop of York a 
similar work in Latin, the Medulla Alchimiae, with a request for a home in some 
religious house. Manuscripts of both works are fairly numerous, and in many of 
those of the English poem there appears a preface of sixteen lines assigning it to 
Ripley, mentioning his study in Italy, and saying that he dwelt “aforetime” at 
Exning or Yxning. We have as yet no more information about him. 

Manuscripts of the Compend are not yet listed, and probably not all recog- 
nized. That at Aberystwyth, South Wales, from which I print the Prohibicio, 
came to light in 1912; codices are known at Corpus Christi College Oxford, Univ. 
Libr. Cambridge Ff ii:23, Trinity College Cambridge O 2,16 and O 5,31, and 
Harley 367 of the British Museum, in the hand of John Stow. The preface to the 
poem is in Brit. Mus. Sloane 299, and there is a fragment in Univ. Libr. Cam- 
bridge Kk vi:30. 

The Compend was printed in 1591, and in Elias Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemi- 
cum Britannicum, 1652. In 1658 appeared Ripley Reviv’d: or an Exposition 
eee ae George Ripley’s Hermetico-Poetical Works; see Corser’s Collectanea, 
ix 21O7: 

The work consists of a dedicatory letter to Edward the Fourth, in thirty 
eight-line stanzas; Ripley therein says that he was earlier called upon to impart 
his knowledge to the king, while he was at the University of Louvain; that he 
wrote Edward thence secretly, and is now prepared to reveal much more valuable 
information to his sovereign, and to him alone. A general prologue of thirteen 
seven-line stanzas follows this letter, and the preface follows upon the prologue. 
This preface, of twenty-nine stanzas rime royal, closes with a list of the twelve 
chapters of the ensuing work; and to these twelve chapters, which constitute the 
body of the Compend, there is added a final “Prohibicio” of fifteen stanzas. De- 
spite the attempt at lofty and ‘“‘aureate” language in the preface, the work has no 
claim whatever to be considered literature ; but it has an antiquarian value, and a 
value as parallel or footnote to Chaucer’s Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale. Indeed, Ash- 
mole includes in his Theatrum both Chaucer’s tale and Lydgate’s Churl and Bird, 
which he entitles Hermes Bird, and to which he gives an alchemical interpretation. 

Royal interest in alchemy, as shown by both Henry the Sixth and Edward 
the Fourth, was doubtless responsible for the reappearance of the pseudo-science 
after its suppression during the early fifteenth century. Several of the numerous 
writers contemporary with Ripley are represented in Ashmole’s volume, where 
may be read Norton’s Ordinall of Alchemy, Charnock’s Breviary of Natural Phil- 
osophy, and various briefer anonymous pieces, all with introductions and notes 
by Ashmole, an ardent believer in the science. The student may consult also 
Gower’s Confessio Amantis, iv: 2450-2630, the EETS edition of the Boke of 
Quynt Essence, Lydgate’s Secreta Secretorum, Ben Jonson’s Alchemist as ed. by 
Hathaway, 1903, Waite’s translation of Paracelsus, London, 1894, Thorndike’s 
History of Magic, N. Y., 1923, Skeat’s notes to the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, etc. 


[ 252 ] 


THE COMPEND OF ALCHEMY 208 


But from the summary of alchemical principles, given in my notes below, no clear 
and definite explanation must be expected; the subject is too cloudy and fantastic 
to admit of such statement. 

I use the form of title as in the MSS, passing over the modern “Compound 
of Alchemy”. The word compendium or compend meant a succinct statement, 
which was apparently Ripley’s intention. Of other works by him, as listed by 
Bale and repeated by Ashmole, I take no account here; the question of a Ripley 
canon is not yet investigated. 

Most of the copies of the Compend which I have examined are poorly written, 
often contained in sixteenth-century compilations of alchemical works. The 
Aberystwyth codex is a notable exception. It is a paper volume of 27 leaves, 17 
by 11 inches, sewed into a vellum cover, and is of the Compend only. The hand is 
large and somewhat coarse, the ink still very dark and the paper clean and white. 
Mutilations of some lower leaf-corners injure the text occasionally. The last two 
folios, not needed for the Compend, are filled by a later hand with writing and 
pen-drawings. There is no letter to Edward the Fourth; the work begins with the 
prologue and goes through the Prohibicio. Other MSS lack sometimes the Pro- 
hibicio, sometimes the prologue ; the Cambridge Ff volume is often rubbed to il- 


legibility. I use the Aberystwyth codex for the Prohibicio here, and print some 
stanzas of the preface (not the prologue) from the Ff and the Corpus texts. 


Oh hyghe incomperable and moste glori- 
ose trinyte 

Whose lumynouse beames obtundytne our 
speculation 

Oh onehede in sothe oh trynhede in deite 

Of lierarchycall Iubilesses the gratulat 


gloryfycation 

O pietouse pueryfyer of Soules & pure 
perpetuation 

Of deviant into daunger oh drawer moste 
debonayr 

In thys envyouse valey of vanyte Oh our 
exalter 

* * * * * * 


And among other whych ben proffessed 
to thee 

I me present as one wyth humble sub- 
myssyon 30 

Thy servant besechyng that I may be 

And trev in lyvyng accordyng to my pro- 
fessyon 

In order . channon reguler of Brydellyng- 
ton 


Stanza 1 is from the MS Ff ii, 23 of Univ. Libr. 
Cambridge, but the remaining stanzas of the 
Preface are from the Corpus copy, as the 
Ff is badly rubbed. I number the lines 
of Preface and Prohibicio separately, and 
moet recognition of other parts of the 
work, 


Besechyng thee lord . thou wylt me spare 
And to thy trew servant thy secret de- 
clare 


6 

In be begymnyng when thou madest all 
off noght 

A globous matter & dark vnder confu- 
syon 

By thee the begymner mervelusly was 
wrought 

Conteynyng materyally all thyngs wyth 
out dyvysyon 

Of whych thou madst in vj days clere 


dystynccion 40 
As in the genysses of the same doth 
recorde 


Then heuen and erth were perfected wyth 
pi worde 


7 
So thorow thy wyll and power out of 
one mas 
Consumed . was made all thyngs that 
beyng is 
But in thy glory . afore . as maker thou 
was 


Now is and shall . wyth out end be Iwys 

As a most reverent god . florysshyng in 
all perfeccyon 

Of whose innvmerable gyfftes . hath re- 
ceyved many one 


254 GEORGE RIPLEY 


And to sum the secret of the phylosophers 
stone 


For of one mas was made all thyng 50 

And ryght so must it in our practyse be 

All our secrets of one ymage must spryng 

In phylosophers books therfore who lyst 
for to see 

Our stone is called the les world one of 
three 

Magnesia also of sulphur and mercury 

Proporcyonat by nature most perfectly 


9 
But many one marvayle and marvayle 
maye 
And muse on such a marvylous thyng 
What is our stone syth phylosophers doo 
say 
To such as ever be itt sekyng 60 
It foules and fysshes to vs doo bryng 
Ech man hath it . and it is in ech place 
In thee and me . in ech thyng tyme and 
space 


10 

To this I answere that mercury it is Iwis 

But not the commen called quyksylver by 
name 

But mercury wythout whych nothyng 
beyng is 

All phylosophors truly say the same 

But symple sekers put them in blame 

Sayeng they hyde it . but they be blame 
worthy 

Whych be no clarks and wyll medle wyth 


phylosophy 70 
11 
But thogh it mercury be . yet wysely 
vnde(r)stande 


Wherin it is and where thou shalt it seche 

Els I thee counsayle take not thys work 
in hande 

For phylosophors flatters fooles wyth a 
fayer spech 

(But lyste to me for trulye I will be 
teche) 

Whych is the mercury most profytable 

Beyng to thee not deceyveable 


12 
It is more nygh in sum thyng then in 
sum 
Therfore take tent . what I to thee wryte 


For yf thou never to the knowledge 
com 80 

Therof yet shalt thou me not wytt 

For I wyll truly thee exyte 

To vnderstand now mercurys three 

The keyse whych of our scyence be 


13 


Raymondus his menstrues he doth them 
calle 

Wythout whych truly no truth is done 

But two of them be superfycyall 

The thyrd essencyall of sonn and mone 

Her propertyse I wyll declare ryght sone 

And Mercury of other mettall essen- 
cyall 90 

Is the pryncyple of our stone materiall 


14 


Non est mercurius de sole & luna sed de 
alio metallo 


In sonn and mone our menstru is not 
sene 

It not aperyth but by effect to syght 

That is the stone of whych I mene 

Who so our wrytyng conceyveth ryght 

It is a soule a substance bryght 

Of sonn and mone a subtyle influence 

By whych pe erth receyveth resplendence 


16 
Factum calcem 


Bodys wyth the fyrst we calcyne natur- 
ally 

Perfect . but none whych be vnclene 

Except one whych is vsyally 

Named by phylosophors the lyon grene 

He is the meane . the sonn & be mone 
betwene 110 

Of ioynyng tyncture wyth perfectnes 

As Gebar therto bereth wytnes 


17 
Distillat calcem in furnace reverbera- 
cionts 
Wyth the second whych is an humydyty 
Vegetable revyvyng that before was ded 
Both pryncyples materyall must losyd be 
And formals els standeth they lytle in sted 
Thes menstrues therfore (know) I thee 
rede 
Wythout whych neyther treu calcynacyon 
Don may be neyther naturall dis- 
solucyon 


THE COMPEND OF ALCHEMY 255 


18 
Recepit flegma per se distillando 


Wyth the thyrd humydyty most perma- 
nent 120 

Incombustyble and vnctuus in his nature 

Hermes tree to asshis is brent 

It is our naturall fyer most sure 

It is our Mercurius our sulphur wyth 
tincture pure 

Our soule our stone borne vp wyth wynde 

In the erth engendred bere thys in thy 
mynde 


19 

Thys stone also tell thee I dare 

Is the vapour of metalls potencyall 

How thou shalt gett it thou must beware 
For invysyble truly is thys menstruall 730 
How be it wyth the second water phylo- 

sophycall 

By seperacyon of elements it may appere 
To syght in forme of water clere 


20 
Off that menstru by labor exuberate 
And with it may be made sulphur of 
nature 
If yt be kyndly acuate 
And sirculate into a spryt pure 
Then to dyssolve thou mayst be sure 
The bace wyth yt in dyvers wyse 
As thou shalt know by thy practyse 140 


21 
Circulare lygidum in siccum est acuare 


That poynt perfore in hys dew place 

I wyll declare wyth other mo 

Yf god wyll graunte me space and grace 
And me preserve in lyff from wo 

As I thee tech looke thou doo so 

And for thy fyrst ground pryncypall 
Vnderstand thy waters menstruall 


22, 
And when thou hast made cyrculacyon 
ne not wastyng moysture rady- 
ca 
To thy bace by offten subtylacyon 150 
Wyll lyghtly flow as wax apon metall 
Then lose it wyth thy vegytable men- 
struall 
Tyll thou hast oyle therof in coloure 
bryght 
Then is that menstru vysyble in syght 


23 
An oyle it is draune out in colour of 
golde 

Or lyke therto . out of our fyne red lede 
Whych Raymonde sayd when he was olde 
Much more then gold wyll stand in stede 
For when he was for age nygh dede 

He made ther of aurum potabile 160 
Whych (hym) revyved as men may see 


24 

ffor so together may they be cyrculate 
That is to say that oyle and that vegytable 

menstruall 
Eyther so by laboure exvberat 
And made by crafft a stone celestyall 
Of nature so fyery that we doo call 
Our basylysk eyther our cockatryce 
Our grete Elyxer moste of pryce 


25 
Whych as the syght of a _basylyske 
abiecte 
Kylleth so slayeth the crude Mer- 
curye 170 
When ther upon it is proiecte 
In twynklyng of an eye most sodaynly 
That Mercury then tayneth permanently 
All bodys to sonn and mone perfect 
Thus gyde thy bace both red and whytt 


27 

But into chapters thys (treatis) I shall 
devyde 

In number . xij . wyth dew recapytulacyon 

Superfluus rehersall I laye asyde 

Intendyng onely to gyve trew informa- 
cyon 

Both of the theoryk and practycall opera- 
cyon 

That by my wrytyng who so wyll gvyded 
be 

Of hys intent perfectly spede shall he 


28 
The fyrst chapter shalbe of naturall cal- 
cynacyon 190 
The second of dyssolucyon secret and 


phylosophycall 
The thyrd of our ellementes seperacyon 
The fowerth of coniunccyon matrymony- 
all 
The .5. of putrefaccyon then folow shall 


256 GEORGE RIPLEY 


Of congelacyon albyfycatyve shalbe the 
syxt 

Then of cybacyon the seventh shall folow 
next 

29 

The secretes of our sublymacyon the .8te. 
shal shew 

The .9th. shalbe of fermentacyon 


The tenth of our exaltacyon trew 
The eleventh of our mervylous multy- 


plycacyon 200 
The 12th of proieccyon then recapytula- 
cyon 


And so thys tretys shall take an ende 
By the helpe of god as I intende . / 
Thus endyth the preface . / 


PROHIBICIO 


Affter all thys I wyll thow vnderstonde 
ffor thy sauegard what I haue done 
Meny experymenttes haue I hade in honde 
As I fownd wretyn for sune and mone 
Whych I wyll tell the rehersyng soone 
Begynnyng at vermylon whyche provyd 
nowght 
And mercury sublymyd whych I dere 
bowght 


I made solucions meny on 

Off spyryttes fermenttes salttes Iren and 
stele 

Wenyng so for to make ower stone 10 

But faythfully I lost yche dele 

After my bokys yet wrowght I well 

Whych euer ontrewe I provyd 

And that made me full sore agrevyd 


3 

Water corosyves and water ardente 
In whych I wrowght in diuers wysse 
Many on I made but ail was schent 
Egge schelles I calcynyd twysse or 

thrysse 
Oyles from calcys I made aryse 
And every element from other twyne 20 
But profyte fond I ryght none therin 


Also I wrowght in sulphure and in vi- 
triall 

Wych folys do call the grene Lyon 

In arsnyke in orpement fowle mut them 
befall 

In debily principio was myne Incepcion 

Therfore was ffrawde in fine my conclu- 
cion 

And thus I blewe my thryft at the colle 

My clothys were bawdy my stomake was 
neaver holle 

5 


Sall armonyake and sandyvere 

Sall alkeley sall alembroke sall alter 30 

Sall peter sall tartour sall comen sall 
geme moste clere 


Sall vytre sall sode of thes be ware 

ffro the odovre of quyke syluer kepe the 
fare 

Medyll not wt mercury precypytate 

Nother with Inperfyte bodys rubyfycate 


6 
I provyd vrynes egges here and blode 
Es vste and crokfere wych dyd me no 


goode 

The scalys of Irene whych smethys of 
smytys 

Letarge and antymony not worth too 
myttes 

Bothe rede and whyght whych wer 
vntrewe 40 


The sowle of saturne and also markesyte 
Off wych gay tynctures I made to schewe 


Oyle of lune and water wt labowre grete 

I made yt calcynyng wt salt preperate 

And be yt selfe wt vyolent heate 

Gryndyng wt venyger tyll I was fatygate 

And also wt aqua vite wt spycys accu- 
ate 

Vppon a marbyll stone whych stode me 
ofte to coste 

And oyles wt corrosyves but all was lost 


8 

Meny a malgam dyd I make 
Wenyng to fyx hem to gret avayle 
And therto sulphure dyd I take 
Tartour egges whyghtes and oyle of the 

snayle 
But euer of my purpose dyd I fayle 
What for the more and what for the lesse 
Euermore sumthyng wantyng ther was 


9 
Wyne and mylke oyles and renett 
The slyme of sterrys that fall vppon 
grownd 


Stanza 6. The line arrangement is wrong. The 
order in Ashmole’s print is 36, 38, 37, 41, 
39, 42, 40. 


THE COMPEND OF ALCHEMY 257 


Celydony with secundynes and meny mo 


yet 
In thes I practysyd as was in bokys 
fownd 60 
I wan ryght nowght but lost meny a 
pound , 


Off mercury and metalles I made crys- 
tall stonys 

Wenyng it had bene a worke for the 
nonys 


10 

Thus I rostyd and broylyd as on of gevers 
cokys 

And oftentyme my wynnyng in the asches 
I sowght 

ffor I was dysseyuyd wt meny falce bokys 

Wherby vntrewly meny tymes I wrovght 

But all such experymenttes avaylyth 
ryght nowght 

But browght me in daynger and comber- 
aunce 

By los of my gooddys and meny other 
grevaunce 


tt 

Now for the love of ouer lady suche lewd- 
nes eschewe 

Nor medyll wt no falshod whych proved 
never well 

Assaye when thow wylte and thow schalt 
fynd me trewe 

Wyn schalt thow ryght nowght but lose 
euery dele 

es in thy pawkener few schalt thow 
ele 

In smokes and in smelles thow schalt 
haue mykell woo 

That vnneth for syknes on the grownd 
schalt thow goo 


12 

I saw neaver trew werke trewly but one 

Off the wych in thys treatys before I 
haue tolde 

Stond onely therby for to make ower 
stone 80 

ffor therby may thow wyne both syluer 
and golde 

Vppon my wretyng therfore to grownd 
the beholde 

ffor so schalt thow lese nowght yff god 
be thy guyde 

Trust to my doctryne and therto Abyde 


13 

Remembre how man ys most noble crea- 
ture 

In composycyon ertly that euer god 
wrovght 

In whom ys of .4. elementtes propor- 
cyonnyd by nature 

A newtriall mercurialyte whych costyth 
ryght nowght 

Owte of hys mynerue by marte yt ys 


browght 
ffor ower metalles be nowght els but ower 
myners too 90 


Off ower sune and mone wysse Raymonde 
saythe soo 


14 

The clernes of the mone and of the sune 
so bryght 

Into thes too myners descendyd secretly 

How be yt the clernes ys hyd from thy 
syght 

By crafte thow schalt make yt appere 
opynly 

Thys hyde stone thys on thyng therfore 
putryfye 

Washe hym wt hys owne broth tyll 
whyght he become 

Then ferment hym wyttely . loo here ys 
all and somme 


15 

Nowe vnto god almyghtye I the com- 
mende 

Whych gravnte the grace to knowe thys 
on thyng 100 

ffor now ys thys treatysse browght to 
an ende 

And god for hys mercy vnto hys blys 
vs bryng 


Sanctus sanctus sanctus where angellys 
doth syng 
Praysyng wt owte sesyng hys gloryows 
mageste 
Whych he in hys kyngdome vs graunte 
for to see 
Amen 


[Below is a rubric by the scribe in doggerel] 


Hec auctor parse qui scripsit ritmica parte 

Tu miserere sibi qui dedit ista tibi 

Diuicias dat corporeas tu spirituales 

Dans Impende sibi que prece visque tibi 
Explicit Rypla 


THE COURT OF SAPIENCE 


The fifteenth-century poem bearing this title, and long, though mistakenly, 
attributed to John Lydgate, is composed of two books quite different from each 
other in character, the material of the first being theological, that of the second 
largely encyclopedic. In Book i the subject is the strife between Mercy and Peace, 
Righteousness and Truth, as to the fate of Adam or Mankind, the disobedient 
servant. This strife, when at the height, when Mercy has swooned and Peace has 
fled into the wilderness, is appeased by Sapience’s advice to Christ that the solution 
lies with him, in his submission to human life and human death for Mankind’s re- 
demption. He carries this out; Man is forgiven; and the Four Daughters of God 
are reunited in happiness. The whole story is narrated by Sapience herself to a 
learner, the author, who has sought her for advice on his own affairs; and at its 
close, with Book i, she invites the listener to accompany her to her dwelling. The 
wonders of the journey and of that dwelling, often presented merely by lists, fill 
the second book, with theological material again at its close. This second book 
is the longer, of 201 stanzas in rime royal; Book i has with the prologue 129 
stanzas. 

Three written copies are known to exist. The first, in the library of Trinity 
College Cambridge, there marked R 3,21, lacks the ten stanzas of opening prologue, 
and stops some 30 stanzas short of the close of Book ii, although with a colophon 
by the scribe asserting conclusion. It has also three cases of omitted or amalga- 
mated stanzas, gaps noted on the margin by John Stow the antiquary, who at one 
time owned the volume, and has himself a copy of the poem in his MS Brit. Mus. 
Adds, 29729 ; Stow’s copy was made from the Caxton print, and was executed in 
1558. The third MS-text is in Brit. Mus. Harley 2251, and is of 63 stanzas only, 
breaking off with the mutilation of the volume at close. Four (non-consecutive) 
stanzas from Peace’s appeal to God the Father in Book i, beginning “O Mercifull 
and O merciable’”, are found combined with other stanzas in the MS Trin. Coll. 
Cambr. R 3,19, and have been thence printed as noted in my Chaucer Manual, 
p. 442. Bits are in Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities, i:325-30, from Caxton, 
and in Miss Spurgeon’s Chaucer-Allusion, i:16-17. 

The Caxton print of ?1481, which may not long postdate the composition of 
the poem, remains in four copies, one in the British Museum, one at St. John’s 
College, Oxford, another (Earl Spencer’s) at the John Rylands Library, Manches- 
ter, and another privately owned. Wynkyn de Worde issued an edition in 1510, 
of which there is a copy in the British Museum; and my text here cited is partly 
from a copy of de Worde checked by Caxton-collations made for me, and partly 
from a rotograph of the Trinity MS belonging to the Modern Language Associa- 
tion of America. 

There are two modern editions. That by Dr. Robert Spindler, Munich diss. 
and printed Leipzig, 1927, has appeared; that for the EETS by Miss Katherine 
Salter Block is under way. 

Stephen Hawes, in stanza 186 (chap. xiv) of his Pastime of Pleasure, in- 
cluded the Court of Sapience, or a Court of Sapience, among the works of Lyd- 
gate. The Caxton print bears no author’s name, but Hawes was supported by 
Stow, who not only put “compyled by John Lydgate” to his own copy, but wrote 


[ 258 ] 


THE COURT OF SAPIENCE 259 


it after heading and colophon of the Trinity MS, whose scribe made no statement as 
to author. Warton and Dibdin accepted this, and Schick, page cx of his edition of 
Lydgate’s Temple of Glass, had no doubt as to the genuineness of the ascription. 
But MacCracken, page xxxv of his introduction to Lydgate’s Minor Poems, vol. i, 
EETS, refused to believe the poem by Lydgate, and it is hard to see how any close 
examination could leave Lydgate’s authorship unquestioned. Spindler, op. cit., 
presents the case fully. There is nothing in Lydgate’s style or in the movement 
of his mind which resembles this direct and often very vigorous workman; Lyd- 
gate’s hesitant repetitions, his jarring verse-structure, are not here; the mode in 
which knowledge is displayed, although pedantic, is not Lydgatian. 

The text of the poem is not in very good condition in any one copy; but when 
the blunders and omissions of the Trinity scribe are rectified by comparison with 
Caxton, Trinity’s consistent orthography, fairly sound rhythm, and careful mar- 
ginalia give an interesting result. 

The Trinity College MS is on paper, an amalgamation of many separate book- 
lets ; this, the third, is of 33 written and one blank leaf, in one neat compact profes- 
sional hand, with a full equipment of marginalia for the reader’s guidance and with 
many interspersed Latin passages, some lengthy, all carefully “engrossed”. The 
preceding booklet of the volume, carrying Pety Job, is in the hand of the scribe 
of MSS Harley 2251 and Adds. 34360 of the British Museum; this is important 
in view of the existence of our poem also in the Harley volume. The Trinity 
scribe’s spelling and language are late; he regularly writes theym, and uses the 
rune, even for the or that, in only one case so far as I have noted. 

As above remarked, Hawes mentions this poem, or a poem by this title, in 
his list of Lydgate’s works; see line 1301 of the Pastime of Pleasure, here. The 
frequent use by Hawes of terms found in the Court of Sapience, such as depured, 
gilt, gay and glorious, redolent, reflair, makes it probable that he read and admired 
this text. Burkart, pp. 51-54 of his Hawes dissertation mentioned p. 271 here, 
argued the influence of the Court of Sapience on Hawes, not only as regards vo- 
cabulary but on conception and management of the Pastime. Natter, as mentioned 
ibid., opposes the latter argument. Full discussion of Hawes’ relation to this poem 
will doubtless come with an edition of either work as a whole; it may then also 
appear that the similarity in subject between chapters xi-xiv of Lydgate’s Life of 
Our Lady and the Court of Sapience book i misled Hawes as to authorship of our 
poem. For this similarity see Schick, page cii of the introduction to his edition of 
the Temple of Glass; the Lydgatian heading there quoted, the “Dispute between 
Mercy and Peace, Righteousness and Truth, for the Redemption of Mankind”, 
could easily be used of the first half of the Court of Sapience. Note also that those 
chapters of the Life of Our Lady, with that heading, occur separately in at least one 
manuscript, now Huntington 144, from the Huth Library, and once in the pos- 
session of John Stow. 

Dr, Hope Traver, in her monograph on The Four Daughters of God (Bryn 
Mawr, 1907), devotes pp. 152-58 to a rapid summary of the contents of book i 
of this poem, and mentions at least three sources for its material,—Grosseteste, 
Bonaventura, and Deguileville’s Pélerinage de Jésu-Crist. Of the second book no 
detailed study has yet (1927) appeared, but the author’s familiarity with the 
Seven Liberal Arts indicates a man well-educated and alertly curious. There are 
dry theological passages in book i, and some barren lists in book 11; but there are 
also striking lyrical passages in the former book, striking descriptive bits in the 


260 ANONYMOUS 


latter. Whoever made the compilation, although unoriginal enough, was observant, 
energetic, free of formula, often vigorous of speech; his control of rhythm and 
language is good, his rime living, his syntax clear. There is none of Lydgate’s 
floundering, either in verbiage or in sentence-structure. To make this evident, I 
cite a passage or two from the first (or theological) book, before a set of extracts 


from the second is presented. 


[From Caxton’s print, no date] 


The laberous & y® most merueylous 
werkes 

Of sapience syn firste regned nature 
My purpos is to tell as writen clerkes 
And specyally her moost notable cure 

In my fyrst book I wyl preche & depure 5 
It is so plesaunt vnto eche persone 

That it a book shal occupye alone 


2 
Sone after this I shal wysedom descryue 
Her blessyd howshold / and her wonnyng 
place 
And than retourne vnto her actes blyue 10 
As she them wrought by tyme, processe 
& space 
Al this mater she taught me of her grace 
I spak with her / as ye may here and 


rede 
For in my dreme I mette her in a mede 
3 
O clyo lady moost facundyous 15 


O rauysshyng delyte of Eloquence 

O gylted goddes gay and gloryous 

Enspyred with the percyng Influence 

Of delycate heuenly complacence 

Within my mouth late dystylle of thy 
showres 20 

And forge my tonge to glad myn audy- 
tours 

4 

Myn ignoraunce whome clowded hath 
eclippes 

With thy pure bemes illumyne al aboute 

Thy blessyd breth lete refleyr in my 


lyppes 
And with the dewe of heuen thou them 
degoute 25 


So that my mouthe maye blowe & en- 
cense oute 


1. Three-line capital T. 

Stow’s copy places the bar as does Caxton, and 
differs textually by omitting of from 12, insert- 
ing thee after O in 15, and changing thy to the 
in 28 


The redolent dulcour Aromatyke 
Of thy depured lusty Rethoryck 


I knowe my self moost naked in al artes 

My comune vulgare eke moost inter- 
upte 30 

And I conuersaunte & borne in the partes 

Wher my natyf langage is moost corrupt 

And wyth most sondry tonges myxt & 
rupte 

O lady myn wherfor I the byseche 

My muse amende, dresse / forge / 
mynysse & eche 35 


For to al makers here I me excuse 

That I ne can delycately endyte 

Rude is the speche of force / whiche I 
must vse 

Such infortune my natyf byrth may wyte 

But O ye lordes whiche haue your delyte 

In termes gay / and ben moost eloquent 

This book to yow no plesaunce may pre- 
sent 


But netheles as tasted bytternesse 

Al swete thyng maketh be more precious 

So shal my book extende the godely- 
nesse 45 

Of other auctours whiche ben gloryous 

And make theyr wrytyng delycyous 

I symple shal extolle theyr soueraynte 

And my rudenes shall shewe theyr subty- 
lyte 


8 

Gower chaucers erthely goddes two 50 
Of thyrste of eloquent delycacye 

With al your successoures fewe or moo 
Fragraunt in speche / experte in poetrye 
You ne yet theym in no poynt I enuye 
Exyled as fer I am from youre glorye 55 
As nyght from day / or deth from vyc- 

torye 


THE COURT OF SAPIENCE 261 


I you honoure / blysse / loue and glory- 
fye 
ad to whos presence my book shal 
atteyne 
His hastyf dome I praye hym modefye 
and not detraye / ne haue it in dysdayne 
For I purpoos no makyng for to dystayne 
Meke herte / good tonge / and spyryte 
pacyent 62 
Who hath these thre / my book I hym 
present 
10 


And as hym lyst lete hym detray or adde 

For syth I am constreyned for to wryte 

By my souerayne / and haue a mater 
glad 

And can not please paynte enourne ne 
endyte 

Late ignorance & chyldhode haue the 
wyte 

I aske no more / but god of his mercy 

My book conferme from sklaunder and 
enuy 70 


Explicit Prohemium 


[The author of the poem, mated by Dame 
Fortune in the chess-play of life, is bidden 
by Reason to seek Sapience; he falls asleep, 
and in that sleep his spirit passes through a 
desert place inhabited by wild beasts “in 
deuouryng expert”. Beyond, in a heavenly 
mead by the River of Quiet, he finds Dame 
Sapience, to whom he swears fealty. She is 
resting from the performance of a task which 
she narrates to him,—a story we have just 
briefly summarized. The definitely religious 
or theological material of this first book 
puts it outside our consideration in this 
volume; but one passage may be cited, not 
merely for its quality but for its possible 
influence upon Stephen Hawes. It is from 
Peace’s farewell to the courts of light and 
love, and fills stanzas 64-69. Line-numbers 
as in Spindler’s ed. of the poem.] 


64 

O seraphin yeue vp thyne Armony 

O Cherubin thy glory do away 

O ye thronys late be all melody 

Youre Ierarchy discryuyd ys for ay 445 
Youre maystresse see in what aray 

She lyth in sowne ylorne wt debate 
ffarewell farewell pure houshold desolate. 
Stow spells poyn, spryte, in 54, 62; otherwise 


he is almost the duplicate of Caxton. 
445. Read disteynd. 454. Read ouer set. 


65 


O souuerayn myghty dominacions 

O ye vertues and potestates 450 

O principates wt all yowre heuynly sowns 

Archaungelles Aungelles O thryes thre 
estates 

Youre spouse dame pease euer set ys wt 
debates 

Now may ye wepe and Ierarchies thre 

Youre ordres now may nat _ restoryd 


be 455 
66 

Farewell ye all . Dame Mercy lyth in 
sowne 

ffor sothfastnes accusyd hath made man- 
kynde 

And ryghtwysnes that sheld (to) all 
reasowne 

Hath dampnyd hym as crewell and vn- 
kynde 

Mercy ne pease for theym may no grace 
fynde 460 


Natwtstandyng iugement may haue no 
sawte 
Because of pease but hit be execute 


67 


Wo worth debate that neuer may haue 
pease 

Wo worth penaunce that asketh no pite 

Wo worth vengeaunce whyche mercy 
may not cease 405 

Wo worth iugement that hath noon equyte 

Wo worth that trewthe that hath no 
charyte 

Wo worth that Iuge that may none gylty 
saue 

And wo worth that ryght that may no 
fauour haue 


Farewell Saturne Joue / Mars and Phe- 
bus bryght 470 
ffarewell Venus and farewell Mercury 
ffarewell the shynyng lady of the nyght 
I was your guyde but now awey go I 
O cruell Mars thy tempestious fury 
Now mayst thow shew and Jubiter thyne 
Ire 
Now mayst thow rynge wt dartys full of 
fyre 
69 
I was the ryng that helde yow all togedyr 
I brydelyd yow and set yow in acorde 


458. The MS has do. 


262 ANONYMOUS 


But now - I « go ywys and I wote not 


whydyr 
Wherfore of force ye must fall to dis- 
corde 480 


O ye souerayn of all batayle the lord 

Now mayst thow sende aftyr (Comet) 
thy messingere 

To signify that batayle nygheth nere 


[The second book makes a complete 
change of subject. Its proheme is:] 


130 


(Forth) to procede in (mater) of my 
booke 

To preche and discryue the solempne 
mansioun 

Of sapience most heuynly on to looke 

Whos feete byn set in all perfeccioun 

And to auoyde the oblocucioun 

Of false tonges and thanke for to deserue 

Thow graunt me grace (0 good goddesse) 
Mynerue 910 


131 


My (style) thow dresse my langage thow 
depure 

My wyt thow force thow mynyster of 
matyer 

ffor syth I am most symple creature 

I nyl vsurpe in thy place to apyer 

But thow me guyde and shew on what 
manyer 

I shall pronounse thynges whyche thow 
dost me se 

Thy refrendary oonly wyll I be 


132 


The pure knowlage and verrey (sente- 
ment ) 

Of thy wysdom was neuer my dowere 

But as the (sonne in) lyght most ex- 
cellent 920 

Wt hys beames the mone illumyneth clere 

So done allwey wysemen thorow foolys 
lere 

Therfore thy wysdom as thow lyst me 
teche 

O lady myne in my booke woll I preche 


482. MS Cornet; Caxton as above. 904. MS has 
First, maner. 910. MS has thow good. 911. 


MS ‘styl. 
918. MS sentment. 920. MS sonny. 934. MS 
of. 937, 941, 942, 943, MS On, that, another, 


hys. 


[Sapience now invites the author to ac- 
company her to her home.] 


Forth went we tho vnto a ryueres syde 

Whos name ys Quyete full of all swetenes 

Oute (ouer) whyche wt Archys hygh 
and wyde 

A brege was set full of all lustynes 935 

The marbyll stoone the solempne worthy- 
nes 

(Of) Geometry shewyd on suche wyse 

So good a werk that no wyght cowde 


deuyse 
135 


The pylours strong enarchyd wt effect 
Wt pynnacles and towres full of blysse 
And allured clene (gaue) suche a dygne 


prospect 

That suche (a) brege was neuer seen 
ywysse 

And on a towre (this) scrypture wretyn 
ysse 

Who dredeth god com yn and ryght well 
come 

ffor drede of god ys wey of all wys- 
dome 945 


[They cross the bridge, and note that the 
gravel of its bed and banks is all of pre- 
cious stones; in nineteen following stanzas 
these stones are alphabetically enumerated 
and their virtues given, from alabaster to 
zyngynt. As his authority the poet refers 
to the Lapidary, to Isidor, or Dioscorides, 
or Bartholomaeus. The reader may change 
the names of the stones at pleasure, says the 
writer; he himself has used Latin “for the 
more surete’. There now follows a descrip- 
tion of the river, with a praise of water the 
element, a list of the rivers of the world, 
and reference to the Hexameron of Basilius 
and to the fifteenth book of Bartholomaeus 
for more information, Stanzas 172 to 181 
contain a “descripcio piscium”, with a list 
of nine authorities for the reader desirous 
of more knowledge. From these two sec- 
tions I give two stanzas each:] 


166 

Basilius in hys Exameron 
Discryueth watyr and hys propurte 
Whoso hath lust may loke hym opon 
But - I - myself wyll fle prolyxite 
And of my ryuer speke as lyketh me 7160 
What shuld I say to her and to beholde 
All erthely thyng passeth a thowsand 

folde 


THE COURT OF SAPIENCE 263 


167 

Hys heuynly sowne his grones delicate 

Hys swete (murmour) hys subtyle course 
and (stylle) 

Hys fresshe colour whyche no storme 
may abate I165 

His vapour swete hauyng (reflyer) at 
wyll 

Myght (saye) askaunce / on thys wyse 
be I wyll 

ffor to excyte owte from the heuens place 

Nature to come to se of my solace 


172 
Thys lusty fyssh (within) thys ryuer 
swete 
Theyre swymmyng course (whiche we) 
fynnys clepe 
They put in vse to bere and swymme and 


fleete 1200 
Now at the ground and now aboue they 
(lepe) 


Now dysseueryd and now apon an hepe 

Now heere now theere now endelong now 
ouerthwert 

The syght of theym myght (hele eche 
wounded) hert 


173 

Som had a lust to (sewe) the sonnys 
(lyght ) 

Som to the pryuate vmbre gon to at- 
tende 

And gadreth in (theyr) bodyes to the 
syght 

Shot oute on (lengthe) theyre corage to 
extende 

Theyr parfyte blys nature myght nat 


amende 
Of net and hooke ne deceyte were they 
aferde 1210 


What shuld I say they had an heuen in 
erde 


[A description of the mead and its flowers 
now follows, extending through the 189th 
stanza, when the “descripcio arborum” is 
reached. I give two of its nine stanzas.] 


Bracketed readings are from Caxton. The MS 
has: 1164 myrrour, fall; 1166 reflex; 1167 I say; 
1198 wtoutyn; 1199 wt; 1201 fleete; 1204 
wonder an; 1205 sowe grace; 1207 theym; 1208 
leyngth. 


190 
An heuenly woode / was on that other 
syde 1325 
And (closed) in wt a ryuer aboute 
Plantyd at lust wt trees full of pryde 
The (blossmy) bowys vnto the erthe gan 
loute 
The Cedyr tre presumptuous and stoute 
Hauyng dysdeyne (in erthe) oonly to 
abyde 
Among the sterres hys hede began to 
hyde 1330 


191 

He and the palme and (eke) the gret 
Cypres 

Gan ryse borioune and refleyre wt al 
delyte 

The bowes brought forth frute of all 
gentylnes 

And yaue vmbre vnto the solempne syght 

Wt double (blysse) eche tree was in- 
signyte 1335 

Wt frute (to) man wt vmbre to the 
ground 

Thus hongor there ne heete myght ha- 
bound 


[The list of birds, which next follows, is 
subjoined entire. ] 


199 


’ The best byrdes in theyre melody 


Theyre heuynly voyce gan to entewne 
anon 

Theyre aungelyk rauysshyng Armony 

Oute thorough the heuen in to the hygh- 
est trone 1390 

Gan perse and passe the ix - ordres ech- 
one 

O cherubyn they sayd com hyder to vs - 

Lerne wt that tewne thow shalt syng 
Sanctus - 


200 
The (throstell coke) opon the Cedre 
grene 
The nytyngale vppon the blossom thorn 
The noble swan wt whyte federes shene 
The Ientyll lark fleyng among the corn 
Ne seaseth nat to syng from euen to 
morn 
Bracketed words are from Caxton’s print. The 
S reads: 1326, clothyd; 1328, blossom; 1329, 


omission; 1331 also; 1335 bysse, which is crossed 
out; 1336, omission; 1394, trustylcok. 


264 ANONYMOUS 


Wt all other fowles of pure plesaunce 

Theyr voyce gan daunt vnto the concord- 
aunce 1400 

201 

Iche other foule in kynde there had hys 
blysse 

Hys lust hys comfort and hys sustenaunce 

They had no nede Roueyn to vse ywysse 

Iche thyng obeyed to theyr hertes ples- 
aunce 

Debate ne stryfe discorde ne yet dis- 
taunce 1405 

Among theym myght nat engendryd be 

Ichone other supportyd in degre - 


202 

The prowde Pecok hys tayle began to 
whele 

On whyche the sparkyng son so purely 
brent 

That to the syght he semyd euerydele 

An Archaungell downe from the heuyn 
sent I4II 

All heuynly colours in hym was content 

Hys tayle the flowres the byrdys eke 
ywys 

The ey the nose the eare fed wt all blys 


203 

The Egle fresshe souerayn of fowles all 
The goode Goshawke the gentyll faucon 

of pryce 1416 
Wt all other that (to) disport royall 
Dysposyd byn ther regnyth at deuyse 
The gentyll Doufe innocent of all vyce 
The Turtyll trew the ffenix singuler 1420 
In lust and blysse togedyrs all they were 


204 
The holsom Pertrege and the Pellicane 
The sparow (eke) the plouers and the py 
The Popingeay the Cok the hen the Crane 
Theyre names all here for to specyfy 1425 
Hit nedeth nat for eueryche (foule) 
shortly 
That ys in kynde and hath in vertew 
myght 
In all comfort reioysyd there hys (flyght) 


205 
They flee at lust there ys nought theym 
to let 
Bracketed readings are from Caxton’s print. In 
lines 1417, 1423, 1426, 1469, the MS omits to, 


eke, foule, the. In 1428 it reads myght; in 
1431 let; in 1467 flowres. 


They bylde in blys they haue all liberte 
They nede not (drede) for gyldyr ne for 


net 1431 
fee where they wyll they byn in all 
sewrtee 


The wynde the rayne nor noon aduersite 
May theym distorbe all ioy ys theym 
among 
The heuyn aboue delyteth in theyr song 
Explicit descripcio Auium 
Incipit descripcio Animalium 


[Four stanzas are now given to a list of 
animals, after which follows a stanza of 
“Recapitulacio”, and the arrival of the 
travelers at the home of Sapience:] 


210 
The watyrs sowne the lusty fysshe and 
fayre 
The good seasoun ye yongly son and 
bryght 1465 


The meede the herbys the flowres and 
theyre reflayre 

The blossom bowes the (fowles) fresshe 
of flyght 

The tenore wynde wt hys brethe and hys 
myght 

Enspyryng thorough (the) blossoms at 
deuyse 

Depeyntyd new on heuynly paradyse 1470 


Explicit descripcio Animalium 
Incipit descripcio Castri & Mansionis 
Sapiencie 


211 
Whan I had seene that souuerayn sol- 
empne syght 
Dame Sapience led me a lytell besyde 
Vnto a comly Castell shynyng bryght 
fful of all solace delyte lust and pryde 
In whos circuite wt vawtes large and 
wyde 1475 
Of parfyte blys y set were towrys seuene 
The heyghte of whyche styeth vp to 
heuene 


212 

The Dyke of hit formyd wt delyte 
ffulfyllyd was wt the watyr of Quiete 
The marble stoone the Alabaustre whyte 
By geometry so frendly goon meete 1481 
That suche a wall in hede body and feete 
Wt precyous stones illumyneth at deuyse 
Was neuer seen hit passeth paradyse 


THE COURT OF SAPIENCE 265 


213 

Vppon a rooche hit was groundyd and 

set 1485 
And euery Botras full of ymagery 
Yche pynnacle (coner) towre and toret 
Wt golde and perle and stonys curyosly 
Depeyntyd was and powdryd lustyly 
And on the yate illumynyd wt all blys 
Wt goldyn lettres thys wrytyn was ywys 


214 

Thys ys the wey to vertew and to grace 

To konnyng knowlache wyt and all wys- 
dom 

Thys ys the wey vnto that heuynly place 

There storme / ne stryfe / syn / vyce 
ne euyll may com 1495 

Thys ys the wey vnto that solempne 
kyngdom 

Where rest pease (blysse) and comfort 
(seceth) neuer 

Com in who wyll and ryght welcom for 
euer 


215 
Seuyn ladyes bryght downe fro the tow- 
res seuen 
Came to the yate wt many ladyes moo 
Seruauntes to theym whos names I woll 
neuen 1501 
ffeyth hope / (tofore) wt Charyte dyd 
0 


g' 
Prudence wt wysdom dame ffortitude also 
Wt Temperaunce and Ryghtwysnes ywys 
Met Sapience / and hertyly gon hyr 
kys 1505 


[The allegorical ladies who make up the 
trains of each of the Virtues are listed in 
the four following stanzas; Theology then 
appears, escorted by “ladyes seuen”, whose 
names are given in the next stanza, viz.:] 


221 

There was Gramor grounde of Sciences 

all 
And Dialatyk full of pure knowyng 
And Rethoryk Science Imperiall 
Dame Arsmetryke was in proporcionyng 
Geometry that mesureth euery thyng 
The lady Musyk and Astronomy 
These ladyes seuen seweth Theology 
Bracketed readings are from Caxton’s print. The 


MS omits those of lines 1487, 1497 (blysse), and 
1502. It reads cesyd in 1497. 


[Dame Philosophy now comes down from 
the “dongeon grete within the place” and 
greets Sapience. Her nature is defined in 
four stanzas, and the functions of her three 
sisters, Phisica, Ethica, and Logica, in stan- 
zas 227-231. On these three, says stanza 
232, Divinity is grounded. An alternative 
classification is then given, filling four stan- 
zas, and in stanza 237 the observer enters 
the first court, administered by Dame 
Science. Here he finds “the phylosopher 
with his companye” sitting in a goodly par- 
lor. Stanza 240 enumerates the company :] 


240 
Arystotyll Aueroys and Avycen 
Good Algazell Galien Apolonius 
Pictagoras and Plato wt hys pen 
Macrobius / Cato. Boecius 
Raasis . Isaak . Calyxt . Orbacius 
Salustius . Theophile . Ipocras 
Wt many mo whos names I lete pas 


[The second court is now entered, ruled by 
Dame Intelligence; it is “full of all lust 
and heuenly complacence’, depainted with 
the heaven, the hierarchies, and the “vn- 
happy chaunce” of Lucifer. A few of the 
indwelling scholars of that “parlor pure” 
are mentioned in stanza 245, but the multi- 
tude of them is too great for full enumer- 
ation, says the poet. 

Next is the third court, Sapience’s own, 
“so rauysshynge and elegaunte” that the 
author, unable to describe it, cries out, “O 
Priamus and thyn hall Ilion’, how insuffi- 
cient are you in comparison! It is hung 
with tapestries of the parables, of Ecclesias- 
ticus, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes; and on the 
dais is portrayed ‘““Mynerue that hyght Pal- 
las’, with spear, shield, serpent locks, cloth- 
ing “Of colours thre delycious and stoute”’, 
and an olive tree on which sits a “night 
crow’. Dame Sapience explains the attri- 
butes and powers of Minerva, stanzas 253- 
255, referring to “Fulgencius in his Metho- 
logye’” as authority. 

After mentioning Theology and some of 
her listeners,—Holcot, Nottingham, Comes- 
tor, St. Thomas, etc.—the poet comes to 
Grammar. | ; 


259 
Wyth Gramer was foure ladyes well be- 
seene 
Of the whyche the furst hyght Dame 
Ortography 
Wythin a parlour lusty fresshe and cleene 


266 ANONYMOUS 


Ther was (eke) gentyll Ethymology 18zo 
Diasintastica and prosody 

These systres foure dyfferent in offyce 
Seruyd Gramer as lady full of pryce 


260 

The furst taught lettres and how men 
shulde wryte 

The second taught the partyes of rea- 
soun 1815 

To telle yche worde trewly ys her delyte 

Whyche ys nowne whyche verbe (and) 
whyche pronown 

The thryd dyd teche parfyte construc- 
ciown 

The last eche worde yaue hys tyme and 
hys accent 

And in these fowre all Gramer ys con- 
tent 1820 


261 
These foure seruyd that Science liberall 
In wrytyng pronow(n)syng and con- 
struyng 
Of letter sillable worde reason wt all 
She hath her principall consideryng 
She ys the ground the yate the entryng 
To all the noble artes liberall 1826 
By her frendshyp they be made speciall 


262 
There was Moyses Cadmus and Card- 
menta 
Eborard fferrum John Garlond and 
Donate 


Precyan Petyr Thomas de Hennoya 1830 
Lambard Papy they wryte erly and late 
The Ianuense was there in gret estate 
And Arystotyll for theyre bookes wyse 
Catholicon and pariarmonise 


263 
‘Hugucion wt many auctors mo 1835 
‘Wrytyng there was and lokyng on Gram- 


ere 
Whos names all shortly I lete ouergo 
They may nat do / but prolong my 
(matere) 
Many a babe of souerayn heuynly chere 
Desyrous all in konnyng to habound 1840 
Abowte Dame Gramer sate to haue theyr 
ground 
Bracketed readings are from Caxton’s print. In 


lines 1810, 1817, the MS omits eke, and. In line 
1838 it reads tyme. 


[Dame Dialectic occupies the next “par- 
lour full of blys”, surrounded by eager pu- 
pils, to whom she reads Latin, and who ask 
no other wage but that they may “dyscerne 
and eke depure Trewthe from falshede”’. 
Her clothing is “prowde and stoute, Of 
differt Scire and of Incipit With Sophysms 
depeynted full aboute.” She teaches her 
students the ‘“comone treatyse’, ‘“Whiche 
whatkyns what is a proposycyon What 
thynge he is and his dyuysyon.” The learn- 
ers dispute briskly; ‘with sophysms 
straunge maters they discusse And fast they 
crye oft tu es Asinus.” She reads them 
“the vniuersals the predicamentes the 
Topykes the principals the Elynkes.” The 
group of her listeners is described in nine 
lines of famous names, including Alfred, 
Juvenal, Mercurius, Demosthenes, Euclid, 
Democritus, Physiologus, Ptolemy, and Wil- 
liam de Conches. 

Next, in her “parlour fresshe and preci- 
ous’, is “Dame Rethoryke modyr of Elo- 
quence Most elegaunt most pure and glory- 
ous.” Her delicious speech ravishes all 
her auditors :] 


272 
And many a Clerke had lust hyr for to 
here 
Hyr speche to theym was parfyte sus- 


tynaunce 
Yche worde of hyr depuryd was so 
clere 1900 


And enlumynyd wt so parfyte plesaunce 

That heuyn hit was to here her beau 
parlaunce 

Her termes gay of facound souerayne 

Cacephaton in noo poynt myght dysteyne 


[In stanza 273 the author enumerates the 
subjects of Rhetoric’s teaching, and bids any 
one who considers his writing dull and blunt 
to go to “Tria sunt And to Galfryde the 
poete lawreate To Ianuense a clerke of 
gret astate”’, or to Tullius “the chosyn 
spowse vnto thys lady fre’, with his 
“ovityd craft’. 

After the usual catalogue of the principal 
students clustered about Rhetoric, the author 
proceeds to Arithmetic, stanzas 277-282, then 
to Geometry, stanzas 283-288; under this 
head is recounted the dispute between Aris- 
totle, Albert, and Ptolemy as to the extent 
of the earth’s circuit. To Music are given 
stanzas 289-299, the manuscript breaking 
off with stanza 297 complete, and a colophon 
as if finished. Astronomy has the following 
sixteen stanzas, which include a censure of 


THE, COURT OF SAPIENCE 267 


the “Gentiles” for identifying the planets 
with gods, and for raising “fysshe and bes- 
tiall” to the heavens. The author also de- 
nounces the “old error” of astrology. ] 


311 
O mysbeleue merueylous for to neuene 
O cursed blyndenes of these gentyles all 
Whiche demyn fysshe / and bestyall be 
in heuen 
For gloryfyed regnaunt perpetuall 
As Rame / bore / crabbe / and bere in 


specyall 2175 
Hounde / lyon / swan / the egle eke in 
fere 


Whome they worshyp for Ioues chyfe 

squyre 
312 

She tolde also of batayll destyne 

And how in sterres some men haue suche 
byleue 

That in theyr byrthe ryght by neces- 
syte 2180 

Ordeyned is all that hym shall please or 
greue 


This olde errour our doctours done re- 
preue 

Socrates the same with Arystotyll sayth 

Notwithstondynge they were not of our 
fayth 


313 
(For) yf a man were in his natyuyte 2785 
Constreyned to his sondry artes all 
Them for to do ryght by necessyte 
Why sholde good men haue laude in 
specyall 
Or myslyuers to punysshement be thrall 
Good Isodre maketh this reson 2190 
In dampnynge of this false oppynyon 


{Astronomy is left behind, and Faith leads 
the learner to her tower, where, in a “par- 
lour full solacious”, sit the apostles writing 
the articles of our faith. Fourteen stanzas 
are filled by a digest of these truths, and 
the work then closes with a list of the things 
all Christian men and women are bound to 
learn. This last part is in prose. ] 


Stanzas 311 ff. are from the Caxton text. Line 
2185, Caxton reads Or. 


STEPHEN HAWES: THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 
(Extracts) 


We know very little of Stephen Hawes. He was allowed mourning-cloth af- 
ter the death of Henry VII’s queen in 1502; he dedicated his Pastime of Pleasure 
to Henry VII in 1506, styling himself one of the grooms of the king’s chamber; 
he may be the “Mr. Hawse” who received payment for a play in 1521 from the 
king; and in 1530 he is mentioned in the past tense by Feylde, in his Controversy 
between a Lover and a Jay. The notices of him by Bale in his 1557 Catalogus 
Scriptorum and by Antony a Wood in his 1691 Athenae Oxonienses are too con- 
ventionally flowery to deserve much consideration ; they assign to Hawes an Uni- 
versity education, a great store of learning, and extensive travels, to which a Wood 
adds the more lifelike detail that Hawes was highly esteemed by the king for “his 
facetious discourse and prodigious memory, which last did evidently appear in 
this, that he could repeat by heart most of our English poets, especially Jo. Lyd- 
gate, a monk of Bury, whom he made equal in some respects with Geff. Chaucer.” 

Hawes has left five poems, the two longer of which are allegorical-didactic 
fictions, the three shorter didactic or “‘occasional”’ with no element of fiction. The 
largest of his poems, the Pastime of Pleasure, is of 5770 lines, mainly in rime 
royal; it is to be dated 1506, as said. The other allegorical fiction, the Example 
of Virtue, was presented to Henry VII in 1504; it is of 2100 lines in rime royal. 

Both these poems are narrated in the first person; each hero, Youth or Virtue 
in the earlier work, Graunde Amour in the Pastime, is aided by a gracious woman- 
counsellor to win a bride; both youths must fight monsters to prove their worth; 
both are triumphantly wedded to the beloved; and each poem extends to the old 
age and death of the hero. This last is an awkward device for a first-person nar- 
rative, but is carried by Hawes in the Pastime even to his own epitaph and to 
Fame’s adding of his name to those of the Nine Worthies. There are many re- 
semblances in episode and in diction between the two poems; Hawes repeated in 
the Pastime every device, narrative or rhetorical, which he had used in the Exam- 
ple; but the Pastime is much enlarged, as compared with the Example, by its ad- 
dition of the education of the hero and of his visit to the Seven Liberal Arts in 
their Tower of Doctrine. 

This allegorizing of University education, and the parallel of Hawes’ nar- 
rative here to the Vision Delectable earlier composed by Alfonso de la Torre for 
a young Spanish prince, tempt the student to see in the Pastime a treatise possibly 
planned for the young prince Henry, son of Henry VII to whom the work is dedi- 
cated. If such be the case, the close similarity between poems written only two 
years apart may be treated as deliberate on Hawes’ part, the educational “cantos” 
being the raison d’étre of the Pastime, and the chivalric cantos expanded in treat- 
ment to support the importance of the perhaps suggested work. 

The Pastime, as remarked, falls into two parts, the cleric or scholastic and 
the chivalric. In the former of these the hero receives his book-education, and 
is accepted by La Bell Pucell, the heroine; in the second he makes himself worthy 
of her by slaying a series of monsters. Through these encounters he is accompanied 
by a comic servitor, Godfrey Gobelive, and the parts of the poem in which Godfrey 
comes to the front are written in couplets instead of the usual rime royal. -The 


[ 268 ] 


THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 269 


kinship of this portion of the poem with the Morality plays is obvious, while the 
romances, and Lydgate’s translation of Deguileville’s Pilgrimage of the Life of 
Man, have influenced the whole work in plan and in choice of episode. For the 
earlier, educational, chapters the sources are quite different. Burkart considered 
that the Court of Sapience was here Hawes’ model, while Natter emphasizes the 
influence of the Margarita Philosophica of the Carthusian prior Reisch, printed 
in 1503. It is not clear to me that Hawes owed much to the plan of either work, 
although the vocabulary of the Court of Sapience, which Hawes believed to be 
Lydgate’s, took a marked effect on him. Other works used by Hawes for these 
chapters are Caxton’s Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, which is cited by name, 
Caxton’s Mirror of the World, Donatus’ Ars Grammatica Minor, and the pseudo- 
Ciceronian treatise on rhetoric, Ad Herennium, etc. The treatment of some of 
this material, notably that from Donatus’ Grammar, is of the most scholastic and 
jejune sort, and as it is, e.g., accompanied by the hero’s request to know what a 
noun substantive is, we may underline our suggestion that the Pastime is a very 
young prince’s manual of education. See the note on lines 465-526 below. The 
influence of Chaucer and of Lydgate upon Hawes appears not in plan or vocabu- 
lary, but in certain details and rhetorical tricks, especially from the Temple of 
Glass and from the Troilus. For example, the dazzling palace upon which the eye 
cannot rest for brightness, the intervention of Venus to aid the lover, are devices 
of the former poem, while not only do the meeting and parting of the lovers show 
reminiscence of Troilus, but Hawes’ use of “anaphora” is perhaps modelled on the 
passage near the close of Chaucer’s poem. We have, however, to remark that his 
use is an abuse; see note on line 232 of Cavendish’s Metrical Visions here. There 
are other traces of Hawes’ reading in his English predecessors Gower, Chaucer, 
and Lydgate, although he has not caught up their lines or their turns of speech 
with half the fidelity of Lydgate’s memory for Chaucer. He is a smaller man 
mentally than Lydgate; he is not so much hag-rid by the half-line formula, but 
he is much more a slave to rime and a hunter of the “aureate” word ; his perceptions 
are duller, his temperament more pedantic. And there is a misuse or strain of 
words in him which is not found in Lydgate. When Hawes says of Priam, in 
cap. 20 of the Pastime (ed. 1845) that “His propre death him selfe he nutrifyed”, 
this may be explained as a printer’s or editor’s error, but there are more than a 
few similar twists of language for rime’s sake in the poem. True, there are also 
some fortunate touches. The trembling servitor’s cry to the young knight, as the 
giant approaches,—‘‘Take heed, quod he, here is a feend of hell!” ; the Lydgatian 
sentiment—‘‘Was never payne but it had joye at last’’; the first view of Fame—“I 
sawe come ryding in a valey farre A goodly ladye” etc. ;—most fortunate of all the 
(possibly proverbial) couplet 


For though the day be never so long 
At last the bells ringeth to evensong,— 


these are high lights, but they are isolated spots in a very dull and long surface; 
and inasmuch as no writer is invariably inadequate, they prove nothing for Hawes. 
The approach of Fame, just mentioned, may have caught Spenser’s eye; but the 
criticism which traces Spenser’s “descent” from Hawes, even though it be Mrs. 
Browning’s criticism, needs scrutiny. In the Cambridge History of English Litera- 
ture, ii:266-7, are listed the agreements in theme and treatment between Hawes 
and Spenser ; but although the aim of both writers is “to fashion a gentleman”, 


270 STEPHEN HAWES 


as Spenser said of himself, that purpose of the Elizabethan age had already begun 
to stir at the court of Henry the Seventh, and had under both sovereigns much the 
same book-material with which to work. As regards detail, Spenser’s Braggado- 
chio, for example, may owe something to Godfrey Gobelive, but the idea of a 
comedy relief could well occur independently to a man of Spenser’s ability, if the 
character be not accounted for by the Miles Gloriosus of the classics or a figure 
like the boastful servant of Herod in the Mysteries. Spenser, like Hawes, is a 
courtly allegorist ; but he is not therefore borrower from the lesser man. As Saints- 
bury says, if he owes Hawes anything, it is a very small royalty. The Pastime 
is a mere rifacimento of stock medieval motifs, whether, as Warton suggested, 
it has a possible French “Passetemps” behind it, or not ; in the Faerie Queene there 
has been a selection of such motifs as well as a transformation. Hawes’ clumsy 
piecing-together of “properties” into a court-poem is without anything of Spenser’s 
eye for the great or Chaucer’s eye for the little. 

But more than one historian of literature has praised Hawes. Warton, in the 
latter eighteenth century, called the Pastime of Pleasure an “unjustly neglected 
poem” which “contains no common touches of romantic and allegoric fiction”, and 
in which also “the improved harmony of numbers and facility of diction’ at- 
tained by Lydgate receive “new graces” from his disciple Hawes. And in our 
own time Churton Collins praised Hawes almost as warmly as he praised Lydgate, 
commending this poem for “‘its pathos, its picturesqueness, and its sweet and plain- 
tive music”. The fitness of these terms is, however, as questionable as is Churton 
Collins’ laudation of the frequent “exquisite beauty” of Lydgate’s verse. Spenser 
we may indeed call “picturesque”, a picture-maker. His material is medieval, and 
he is not a great narrator; he has no development of character to present, and his 
episodes and transitions are conventional. But his highly sensitized soul, delighting 
in color, in glitter, in richness of sound, in delicacy of touch, lavished upon his 
limited gallery of subjects a wealth of sensuous description previously unmatched 
in English. His verse, moreover, was worthy of his pictures. With him there re- 
appears a power lost since Chaucer’s death, the poet’s power to tread his measure 
with a sure and supple command of word, line, and paragraph, to bend language 
to his will. 

This power is not in Hawes. He is a professional verse-maker, honest, dull, 
didactic, possessed of the dangerously little learning which breeds complacency, 
quite rhythm-deaf, insensitive to sight and sound, carrying out his puerile plan 
with stumbling clumsiness. We do mark some small gain over Lydgate in the 
comparative steadiness of Hawes’ advance to his purpose; but we mark no real 
growth in narrative command. His conventional material is used with the vague- 
ness, the awkwardness, of an earlier age, an age overschooled and undersensitized. 
He saw a tower and a tapestry, and had an impulse to depict the pursuit of the 
Ideal; there results the Pastime of Pleasure. Centuries later, a poet saw a tower 
and a tapestry, and dreamed the pursuit of an idea for Truth’s sake; there results 
‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’. 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST XI 
No manuscript is known of any of Hawes’ works, which in the prints are extremely 
rare. They are, in order of consequence :— 
The Pastime of Pleasure, ca. 5770 lines, mainly in rime royal. Printed by de 
Worde in 1509 and 1517; copies in private possession. Printed by Wayland 
1554, by Tottel 1555 (with woodcuts), and by Waley in 1555. The Wayland 


THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 271 


text is reprinted by Southey in his Select Works of the British Poets, 1831, 
the text of Tottel by Wright for the Percy Society, London, 1845. Both 
these modern editions omit some coarse lines from the Godfrey Gobelive 
portions of the poem. Selections are in Ellis’ Specimens, 1811, in Skeat’s 
Specimens of Eng, Lit. 1394-1579, in Ward’s Eng. Poets i:175, in Arnold’s 
Manual, in Fligel’s Neuengl. Lesebuch, in Neilson and Webster’s Chief Brit. 
Poets, 249-255. A bit is in Manly’s Eng. Poetry, 59-60. 
See discussion of the poem in Warton’s HistEngPoetry, ed. Hazlitt, 
111:169-188, in Morley’s Engl. Writers vii, and in Berdan’s Early 
Tudor Poetry, chap. ii: also as below. 

The Example of Virtue, presented to Henry VII in 1504, is of 2100 lines in rime 
royal; it was printed ?de Worde ?1510, again 1530, and may be read in 
Arber’s Dunbar Anthology, 1901, pp. 217-296, with modernized text. 

The Conversyon of Swerers is of 307 lines, and the Joyfull Medytacyon, on the 
coronation of Henry VIII, is of 204 lines, both in stanza, and both printed 
de Worde 1509. They were reprinted for the Abbotsford Club in 1865 by 
David Laing. The former poem was also printed by Copland in 1551, by 


Butler in 1551. 


The Comfort of Louers, of about 350 lines, was printed de Worde no date. The 
unique copy is in private possession. See Berdan op. cit., pp. 86-88. 


Of these works the Pastime of Pleasure, because of its more elaborate structure 
and its supposed influence on Spenser, has received more attention. See:— 


Fuhr, Lautuntersuchungen zu Stephen Hawes’ Gedicht The Pastime of Pleasure 


Marburg diss., 1891. 


Burkart, Stephen Hawes’ The Pastime of Pleasure, A critical introduction to a 
proposed new edition of the text, Ziirich diss., ?1900, pp. 60. 

Zander, Hawes’ “Passetyme of Pleasure” verglichen mit Spenser’s “Faerie Queene” 
unter Berticksichtigung der allegorischen Dichtung in England, Rostock 


diss., 1906, pp. 114. 


Natter, Untersuchung der Quellen von Hawes’ allegorischem Gedicht “Pastime of 
Pleasure.” Munich diss., pubd. Passau, 1911. 


Rhodenizer, V. B., Studies in Stephen Hawes’ Pastime of Pleasure, Harvard diss., 
1918. In typescript in the Harv. Univ. Library. A careful study of Hawes’ 
motifs and stage properties, especially as derived from the romances; valu- 
able for late medieval authors other than Hawes. 

On Hawes see also the Cambr. Hist. Eng. Lit. vol. ii, chap. ix, by William Muri- 

son; see Saintsbury’s Hist. Eng. Prosody i:235-39; see Courthope’s Hist. Eng. Poetry 


1:380. 


[Dedication to Henry VII (part) ] 


Your noble grace, and excellent hyenes 

For to accepte I beseche ryght humbly, 

Thys little boke, opprest wyth rudenes 

Without rethoryke, or colour crafty: 25 

Nothynge I am experte in poetry, 

As the monke of Bury, floure of elo- 
quence 

Which was in the time of great excel- 
lence, 


5 
Of your predecessour, the: v-kyng 
Henry, 
Unto whose grace, he dyd present 30 
Ryght famous bokes, of parfit memory: 
Of hys faynyng wyth termes eloquent. 
Whose fatall ficcions, are yet permanent. 
Grounded on reason, wyth cloudy fygures 
He cloked the trouth of al his scrip- 
tures. 35 


Ze STEPHEN HAWES 


6 
The light of trouth, I lacke cunnyng to 
cloke 
To drawe a curtayne, I dare not to pre- 
sume 


Nor hyde my matter, with a misty smoke 

My rudenes cunnyng, dothe so sore con- 
sume 

Yet as I may, I shall blowe out a fume 40 

To hyde my mynde, vnderneth a fable 

By couert coloure, well and probable. 


7 
Besechyng your grace, to pardon mine 
ignoraunce 
Whiche this fayned fable, to eschue idle- 
nes 
Haue so compiled, nowe without doubt- 
aunce 45 


For to present, to your hye worthines 

To folowe the trace, and all the perfitenes 

Of my master Lydgate, with due exer- 
cise 

Suche fayned tales, I do fynde and deuise. 


8 
For vnder a coloure, a truthe may arise 50 
As was the guise, in olde antiquitye 
Of the Poetes olde, a tale to surmise 
To cloke the trouthe, of their infirmitye 
Or yet on ioye, to haue moralitye 
I me excuse, if by necligence 55 
That I do offende, for lacke of science. 


Youre graces most bounden seruaunt Stephen 

Hawes, one of the gromes of your maiesties 

Chambre, the .xxi. yeare of your prosperous 
raygne. 


HOWE GRAUND AMOUR WALKED IN A MEDOWE, 
AND MET WITH FAME, ENUIRONNED WITH 
TONGUES OF FIRE. CHAP. 1. 


When Phebus entred was, in Geminy 

Shinyng aboue, in hys fayre golden spere 

And horned Dyane, then but one degre 

In the crabbe had entred, fayre & cleare 

When that aurora, did well appeare 5 

In the depured ayre, and cruddy firma- 
ment 


Text from: The Historie of graunde Amoure and 
la bell Pucel, called the Pastime of plesure, 
conteining the Knowledge of the Seuen sciences 
& the course of mans life in this world. Jnuented 
by Stephen Hawes, grome of Kyng Henry the 
seuenth his chamber. 

Newely perused and imprynted by John Wayland 

[etc. Place and date in the colophon, 
London, June 1, 1554. pony in the British 
Museum, ete C.39.d.58.] 


Forthe then I walked, without impedi- 
ment 
2 


In to a medowe bothe gaye and glorious 

Whiche Flora depainted with many a 
colour 

Like a place of pleasure most solacious 10 

Encensyng out, the aromatike odoure 

Of zepherus breathe, whiche that euery 
floure 

Throughe his fume dothe alwaie en- 
gender 

So as I went among the floures tender 


By sodaine chaunce, a faire pathe . 
founde 

On which I loked, and right oft I Bet | 

And then all about, I behelde the grounde 

With the faire pathe, whiche I sawe so 
vsed 

My chaunce or fortune, I nothing re- 
fused 

But in the pathe, forth I went a pace 20 

To knowe whither, and vnto what place 


4 
It woulde me bryng, by any similitude 
So forth I went, were it ryght or wrong 
Tyll that I sawe, of royall pulcritude 
Before my face, an ymage fayre and 


strong 25 
With two fayre handes, stretched out 
along 


Unto two hye wayes, there in particion 
And in the right hande, was this descrip- 
tion 


This is the strayght waye of contempla- 
cion 

Unto the ioyfull tower perdurable 30 

Who that wyll walke, vnto that mancion 

He must forsake, all thynges variable 

With the vayne glory, so muche deceyu- 
able 

And though the way, be hard and daun- 


gerous 
The last ende therof, shalbe ryght pre- 
cious. 35 


6 
And in the other hande, ryght fayre 
wrytten was 
This is the waye, of worldly dignitye 
Of the actiue lyfe, who wyll in it passe 
Unto the tower, of fayre dame beautye 


THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 273 


Fame shal tell hym, of the way in cer- 
taintye 40 

Unto la bell pucell, the fayre lady excel- 
lent 

Aboue all other, in cleare beauty splen- 
dent 


7 

I behelde ryght well, bothe the wayes 
twayne 

And mused oft, whyche was best to take 

The one was sharpe, the other was more 
plaine 45 

And vnto myselfe, I began to make 

A sodayne argument, for I myght not 
slake 

Of my great musyng, of this royall ym- 
age 

And of these two wayes, so muche in 
vsage 


8 

For thys goodly picture was in altitude, 

Nyne fote and more, of fayre marble 
stone jr 

Ryght well fauoured, and of great alti- 
tude 

Thoughe it were made, full many yeres 
agone 

Thus stode I musynge, my selfe all alone 

By right long tyme, but at the last I 
went 

The actyue way, with all my whole en- 
tent 


9 
Thus all alone, I began to trauayle 
Forthe on my waye, by long continu- 
aunce 
But often times, I had great maruayle 
Of the by pathes, so fulle of pleasaunce 60 
Whiche for to take, I had great doubt- 
' aunce 
But euermore, as nere as I myght 
I toke the waye, whiche went before me 
right 


10 
And at the laste, when Phebus in the west 
Gan to auayle, with all his beames merye 
When cleare Dyana, in the fayre south- 
est 66 
Gan for to ryse, lightyng our emispery 
With clowdes cleare, wythout the stormy 
pery 
Me thought a farre, I had a vysyon 
Of a picture, of marueylous facyon. 70 


11 
To whiche I went, without lenger delaye 
Beholdyng well, the right faire portay- 
ture 
Made of fine copper, shynyng faire and 
gaye 
Full well truely, accordyng to measure 
And as I thought, nine fote of stature 75 
Yet in the breast, with letters fayre and 
blewe 
Was written, a sentence olde and true 


12 
This is the waye, and the sytuacion 
Unto the toure, of famous doctrine 
Who that will learne, must be ruled by 


reason 80 
And with all his diligence, he must en- 
cline 


Slouthe to eschue, and for to determine 
And set his hert, to be intelligible 
To a willyng herte, is nought impossible 


13 
Beside the ymage, I adowne me sette 85 
After my laboure, my selfe to repose 
Till at the last, with a gaspyng nette 
Slouth my head caught, with his whole 
purpose 
It vayled not, the bodye for to dispose 
Againste the heade, when it is applied 90 
The heade must rule, it can not be denied 


14 
Thus as I satte, in a deadly slomber 
Of a great horne, I hearde a royall blast 
With which I awoke, and had a great 
wonder 
From whence it came, it made me sore 
agast 9. 
I loked about, the night was well nere 
past 
And fayre golden Phebus, in the morow 
graye 
With clowdes redde, began to breake the 
daye 
15 


I sawe come ridyng, in a valey farre 

A goodly Ladye, enuironned about 100 

With tongues of fire, as bright as any 
starre 

That fiery flambes, ensensed al way out 

Whiche I behelde, and was in great doubt 

Her Palfrey swift, rennyng as the winde 

With two white greyhounds, that were 
not behind 105 


274 STEPHEN HAWES 


16 
When that these greyhoundes, had me so 
espied 
With faunyng chere, of great humilitie 
In goodly haste, they fast vnto me hied 
I mused why, and wherfore it shoulde be 
But I welcomed them, in euery degree 110 
They leaped oft, and were of me right 
faine 
I suffred them, and cherished them againe 


17 

Their collers were of golde, and of tys- 
sue fine 

Wherin their names, appeared by scrip- 
ture 

Of Dyamondes that clerely do shine 175 

The letters were grauen fayre and pure 

To reade their names, I did my busye 
cure 

The one was gouernaunce, the other 
named grace 

Then was I gladde, of all this sodayne 
cace 


18 
And then the Ladye, with fiery flambe 120 
Of brennyng tongues, was in my pres- 
ence 
Upon her palfrey, whiche had vnto name 
Pegase the swifte, so faire in excellence 
Whiche sometime longed, with his premi- 
nence 
To kyng Percius, the sonne of Jubiter 125 
On whom he rode, by the worlde so 
farre 


19 

To me she saied, she marueyled muche 
why 

That her greyhoundes, shewed me that 
fauoure 

What was my name, she asked me truely 

To whom I saied, it was la graunde 
Amoure 130 

Besechyng you to be to me succoure 

To the tower of doctrine, and also me 
tell 

Your proper name, and where you do 
dwell. 


20 
My name quod she, in all the world is 
knowen 
Iclipped Fame, in euery region 135 


For I my horne in sundrye wise haue 
blowen 


After the deathe, of many a champion 

And with my tongues, haue made aye 
mencion 

Of their great actes, agayne to reuiue 

In flamyng tongues, for to abide on 
liue. 140 

21 

It was the custome of olde antiquitye 

When the golden world, had domination 

And nature highe, in her aucthoritie 

More stronger had, her operation 

Then she hath nowe, in her digres- 
sion 145 

The people then did, all their busye payne 

After their death, in Fame to liue agayne 


22 
Recorde of Saturne, the first kyng of 
Crete 
Whiche in his youth, throughe his dili- 
gence 
Founde first plowing, of the landes swete 
And after this, by his great sapience 157 
For the commen profite, and beneuolence 
Of all metalles, he made diuision 
One from another, by good prouision. 


23 
And then also, as some Poetes fayne 155 
He founde shotyng, and drawyng of the 
bowe 
Yet as of that, I am nothynge certaine 
But for his cunnynge, of hye degre and 
lowe 
He was well beloued, as I do well knowe 
Throughe whose laboure, and aye busy 
cure 160 
His fame shall liue, and shall right long 
endure 


24 
In whose time raigned, also in Thessayle 
A parte of Grece, the kyng Melizyus 
That was right strong, and fierce in 
battaile 
By whose laboure, as the storye sheweth 
vs 165 
He brake first horses, wilde and rigorious 
Teachyng his men, on them right wel to 
ryde 
And he him selfe, did first the horse be- 
stryde. 
25 
Also Mynerue, the right hardy Goddesse 
In the same time, of so hyghe re- 
nowne 170 


THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 275 


Uainquished Pallas, by her great worthi- 
nes 

And first made harneys, to laye his pride 
adowne 

Whose great defence, in euery realme 
and towne 

Was spredde about, for her hye chyualrye 

Whiche by her harneys, wanne the vic- 
torye 175 

26 

Dothe not remayne, yet in remembraunce 

The famous actes, of the noble Hercules 

That so many monsters put to vtteraunce 

By his great wisdome, and hye prowes 

As the recule of Troye, beareth good 
witnes 180 

That in his time, he would no battayle 
take 

But for the wealthe, of the commens sake 


27 
Thus the whole mindes, were euer fixt 
and set 
Of noble men, in olde time to deuise 
Suche thinges as were, to the commen 


profite 185 
For in that time, suche was their goodly 
guise 


That after death, their fame shoulde arise 

For to endure, and abide in mynde 

As yet in bokes, we maye them written 
fynde 


28 
O ye estates, surmountyng in noblenes 790 
Remembre well, the noble paynyms all 
Howe by their labour, they wanne the 
highnes 

Of worthy fame, to raygne memoriall 
And them applyed, ever in speciall 
Thinges to practise, whiche should pro- 


fite be 195 
To the comen wealth, and their heires 
in fee. 


OF THE SWETE REPORT OF FAME, OF THE 
FAIRE LADY LA BEL PUCEL, IN THE TOWER 
OF MUSIKE. CHAP. II. 


29 
And after this, Fame gan to expresse 
ences waye to the tower peril- 
ous 
And of the beautye, and the semelinesse 
Of la bel Pucell, so gaye and glorious 200 
That dwelled in the tower so marueylous 


Unto which might come, no maner of 
creature 
But by great laboure, and hard aduen- 
ture 
30 


For by the waye, there lye in waite 

Gyantes great, disfigured of nature 205 

That all deuoureth, by their euil conceite 

Against whose strength, there may no 
man endure 

They are so huge, and strong out of 
measure 

With many serpentes, foule and odious 

In sundry likenesse, blacke and tedi- 
ous 210 

31 

But beyonde them, a great sea there is 

Beyonde whiche sea, there is a goodly 
land 

Most full of fruite, replete with ioye and 
blisse 

Of right fine golde, appeareth all the 
sande 

In this faire realme, where the tower 
doth stand 215 

Made all of gold, enameled aboute 

With noble stories, whiche do appeare 
without 

32 
In whiche dwelleth by great aucthoritye 
Of la bel Pucell, whiche is so fayre and 


bryght 
To whom in beautye, no peare I can 
see 220 
For lyke as Phebus, aboue all starres in 
lyght 


When that he is, in his spere aryght 
Dothe excede, with his beames cleare 
So dothe her beauty, aboue other ap- 
peare 
33 
She is bothe good, aye wise, and vertu- 
ous 225 
And also discended of a noble lyne 
Ryche, comely, ryght meke, and bounte- 
ous 
All maner vertues, in her clearely shine 
No uyce of her, maye ryght longe domyne 
And I dame Fame, in euery Nacion 230 
Of her do make the same relation. 


34 
Her swete report, so my hart set on fyre 
With brennyng loue, most hote and feru- 
ent 


276 STEPHEN HAWES 


That her to see, I had great desyre 
Saiynge to Fame, O Ladye excellent 235 
I haue determined in my iudgement 
For la bel Pucell, the most fayre ladye 
To passe the waye, of so great ieopardye. 


35 
You shall quod Fame, attayne the victory 
If you wyll do, as I shal to you say 240 
And all my lesson, retayne in memory 
To the tower of doctrine, ye shall take 
your waye 
You are now wythin a dayes iourney 
Both these greyhoundes, shal kepe you 
company 
Loke that you cherishe them full gentely 


36 
And countenaunce the goodly portres, 
Shall let you in, full well and nobly 
And also shewe you, of the perfectnes 
Of all the seuen sciences, ryght notably 
There in your mynde, you may entent- 


ifely 250 
Unto dame doctrine, geue perfite audi- 
ence 
Whiche shall enfourme you, in euery 
science 
37 


Fare well she sayed, I may not nowe 
abide 

Walke on your way, with all your whole 
delite 

To the tower of doctrine, at this morowe 
tide 255 

Ye shall to morowe, of it haue a syght 

Kepe on your waye, nowe before you 
ryght 

For I must hence, to specifye the dedes 

Of their worthines, accordyng to their 
medes. 


And with that she did, from me de- 
parte 260 

Upon her stede, swifter then the wynde 

When she was gone, full wofull was my 
hart 

With inward trouble, oppressed was my 
mynde 

Yet were the greyhoundes, left with me 
behind 

Whiche did me comforte, in my great 
vyage 265 

To the tower of doctrine, with their 
fawning courage. 


39 

So forthe I went, tossynge on my brayne 

Greatly musynge, ouer hyll and vale 

The way was troublous, & ey nothing 
playne 

Tyll at the laste, I came to a dale 270 

Beholdyng Phebus, declinyng lowe and 
pale 

With my greyhoundes, in the fayre twy 
light 

I sate me downe, for to rest me all 
nyght 

40 

Slouthe vpon me, so fast began to crepe 

That of fyne force, I downe me layed 275 

Upon an hyll, with my greyhoundes to 
slepe 

When I was downe, I thought me well 
apayed 

And to my selfe, these wordes then I 
sayed 

Who will attaine, sone to his iourneys 
ende 

To nourishe slouthe, he may not condis- 
cende. 280 


HOWE FAME DEPARTED FROM GRAUNDE 

AMOURE, AND LEFT WYTH HYM GOUERN- 

AUNCE AND GRACE, AND HOWE HE WENT 
TO THE TOWER OF DOCTRINE. CA,III. 


41 
Thus then I slept, til that Auroras bemes 
Gan for to spreade, about the firmament 
And the clere sunne, wt his golden 
stremes 
Began for to rise, faire in the orient 
Without Saturnus, blacke encombrement 
And the little birdes, makyng melodye 286 
Did me awake, with their swete armony. 


42 
I loked about, and sawe a craggy roche 
Farre in the west, neare to the element 
And as I did then, vnto it approche 290 
Upon the toppe, I sawe refulgent 
The royall tower, of morall document 
Made of fine copper, wt turrettes faire 
and hye 
Which against Phebus, shone so marueyl- 
ously 
43 
That for the verye perfect brightnes, 295 
What of the tower, and of the cleare 
sunne 


THE PASTIME.OF PLEASURE 277 


I coulde nothing beholde the goodlines 

Of that palaice, where as doctrine did 
wonne 

Tyll at the last, with misty windes donne 

The radiant bryghtnes, of golden Phe- 
bus 300 

Auster gan couer, wyth clowdes tene- 
brus. 


44 


Then to the tower I drewe nere and nere 

And often mused, of the great hyghnes 

Of the craggy rocke, which quadrant 
did appeare 

But the fayre tower, so muche of riches 

Was all about, sexangled doubtles 305 

Gargeyld with greyhoundes, & with many 
lyons 

Made of fyne golde, with diuers sundry 
dragons 

45 

The little turrets, wyth ymages of golde 

About was set, which with the wynde aye 
moued 310 

Wyth propre vyces, that I did well be- 
holde 

About the towers, in sundry wise they 
houed 

Wyth goodly pypes, in their mouthes 
ituned 

That wyth the wynde, they pyped a 
daunce 

Iclipped, amour de la hault pleasaunce. 315 


HOWE HE WAS LET IN BY COUNTENAUNCE 
THE PORTERES, AND OF THE MARUEL- 
OUS BUILDYNGE OF THE SAME TOWER. 
CAPITULO - III - 


46 


The tower was greate, and of maruelous 
wydenesse, 
To whiche there was, no way to passe 
but one 
Into the tower, for to haue an intresse 
A grece there was, ychesyled all of stone 
Out of the rocke, on whyche men did 
gone 320 
Up to the tower, and in likewise did I 
Wyth bothe the greyhoundes, in my com- 
pany 
47 
Tyll that I came, to a royall gate 
Where I sawe standyng, the goodly port- 
res 


Whiche axed me, from whence I came 


alate 325 
To whom I gan, in euery thing ex- 
presse 


All myne aduenture, chaunce and _ busi- 
nes 

And eke my name, I tolde her euery dell 

When she hearde thys, she liked me ryght 


well 
48 
Her name she sayed, was called counten- 
aunce 330 


In to the busy court, she did me then 
leade 

Where was a fountayne, depured of 
pleasaunce 

A noble spring, a royal conduit heade 

Made of fyne golde, enameled with 
redde 

And on the toppe, foure dragons blew 
and stoute 335 

This dulcet water, in foure partes did 
spoute 

49 

Of whiche there flowed, foure riuers 
right cleare. 

Sweter then Nysus, or Ganges was their 
odour 

Tygrys, or Eufrates, vnto them no pere 

I dyd then taste, the aromatike licoure 340 

Fragrant of fume, swete as any flower 

And in my mouthe, it had a marueylous 
cent 

Of diuers spices, I knew not what it 
mente 

50 


And after this, furder forthe me brought 

Dame countenaunce, into a goodly hall 

Of Jasper stones, it was wonderlye 
wrought 346 

The windowes cleare, depured all of 
christal 

And in the roufe, on hye ouer all 

Of golde was made, a right crafty vyne 

In stede of grapes, the Rubies there did 
shyne. 350 

51 

The flore was paued, with berall clarified 

With pillers made, of stones precious 

Like a place of pleasure, so gayely glori- 
fied 

It might be called, a palaice glorious 

So muche delectable, and solacious 355 

The hall was hanged, hye and circuler 

With clothe of arras, in the richest maner 


278 STEPHEN HAWES 


52 
That treated well, of a full noble story 
Of the doubty waye, to the tower peril- 
lous 
Howe a noble knight, shoulde winne the 
victory 360 


[The rest of this stanza, and 7 more, de- 
scribe the tapestry, which depicts the events 
to be narrated in the poem, ending with the 
wedding of the hero and La belle Pucell.] 


60 

And eke the clothe, made demonstration 
How he wedded, the great ladye beaute- 

ous 415 
La bell Pucell, in her owne dominacion 
After his labour, and passage daungerous 
With solemne ioye, and mirthe melodious 
This famous storye, well pyctured was 
In the fayre hall, vpon the arras. 420 


61 

The marshall, yclipped was dame Reason 
And the yewres, also obseruaunce 
The panter Pleasaunce, at euery season 
The good butler, curteys continuaunce 
And the chiefe coke, was called temper- 

aunce, 425 
The lady chamberlayne, named fidelitye 
And the hye stewarde, Liberalitye. 


62 
There sate dame Doctrine, that lady gent 
Whyche called me, vnto her presence 
For to knowe all the whole entent 
Of my commyng, vnto her excellence 
Madame I sayed, to learne your scyence 
I am comen, now me to applye 
Wyth all my cure, in perfect studye. 


63 

And yet also, I vnto her then shewed 435 
My name and purpose, without doublenes 
For very great ioye, than were endued 
Her cristall eyes, full of lowlines 
When that she knewe, for very sikernes 
That I was he, that should so attayne 440 
La bell Pucell, with my busy payne. 


64 
And after this, I had right good chere 
Of meate and drinke, there was great 
plentye 
Nothing I wanted, were it chepe or dere 
Thus was I serued, wt delicate dishes 
dainty 445 


And after this, with all humilitie 

I went to doctrine, praiyng her good 
grace 

For to assigne me, my first learnyng 
place 


65 
Seuen daughters, most expert in cun- 


nyng 

Without foly, she had well engendred 450 

As the seuen Sciences, in vertue so shin- 
yng 

At whose encrease, there is great thankes 
rendred 

Unto the mother, as nothing surrendred 

Her good name, and her dulcet sounde 

Whiche did engender, their originall 
ground. 455 

66 

And first to gramer she first me sent 

To whose request, I did well obey 

With diligence, forth on my way I went 

Up to a chambre, depaynted fayre and 
gaye 

And at the chambre, in right riche araye 

We were let in, by highe aucthoritye 46rz 

Of the ryght noble, dame congruitie. 


[Chapter v is Grammar, chap. vi Logic, 
chap. vii Rhetoric, chap. viii Invention, a part 
of Rhetoric. In chap. v Graunde Amour begs 
to knowe what a noun substantive is:—] 


To whom she answered, right gently 
agayne 530 
Saiyng alwaye, that a nowne substantyue 
Might stande without helpe of an ad- 
-iectyue 
77 
The latyne worde, whiche that is referred 
Unto a thing, whiche is substantiall 
For a nowne substantiue, is well auerred 
And with a gender, is declinall 536 
So, all the eyght partes in generall 
Are latyn wordes, annexed proprelye 
To euery speache, for to speake formally 


[Chapters vi and vii are omitted. Stanza 
3, etc., of viii follow:] 


95 
It was the guyse, in olde antiquitye 
Of famous poetes, ryght ymaginatife 660 
Fables to fayne, by good aucthoritye 
They were so wyse, and so inuentyfe 
Theyr obscure reason, fayre and sugra- 
tyfe 


THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 279 


Pronounced trouthe, vnder clowdy fyg- 
ures 

By the inuention, of theyr fatall scrip- 
tures 665 

96 

And thirdly, they had suche a fansy 

In thys hye art, to be intelligible 

Their fame encreasyng, euermore truely 

To slouthe euer, they were inuyncible 

To their wofull hartes, was nought im- 
possible 670 

Wyth brennyng loue, of insaciate fyre 

Newe thynges to fynde, they set their 
desyre 

97 

For thoughe a man, of hys propre mynde 

Be inuentyfe, and he do not applye 

His fantasye, vnto the busye kynde 675 

Of hys cunnynge, it may not ratifye 

For fantasye, must nedes exemplifye 

His new inuention, & cause hym to en- 
tende 

Wyth whole desyre, to bryng it to an 
ende 


98 
And fourthly, by good estimation 680 
He must number, all the whole circum- 
staunce 
Of this matter, with breuiacion 
That he walke not, by long continuaunce 
The perambulat way, full of all variaunce 
By estimacion, is made annunciate 685 
Whether the matter, be long or breuiate 


99 
For to Inuention, it is equipolent 
The matter founde, right well to com- 
prehende 

In suche a space, as is conuenient 

For properlye, it dothe euer pretende 690 
Of all the purpose, the length to extende 
So estimation, may ryght well conclude 
The perfite number, of euery similitude 


100 
And yet then, the retentife memory 
Whiche is the fift, must euer agre- 
gate 695 
All matters thought, to retayne inwardlye 
Tyll reason therof, hath made a probate 
And by scripture, will make demonstrate 
Outwardly, accordyng to the thought 
To proue a reason, vpon a thyng of 
nought 700 


101 
Thus when the fourth, hath wrought ful 
wonderly 
cae must the mynde, worke vpon them 
al 
By cours ingenious, to runne directly 
After their thoughtes, then in generall 
The mynde must cause them, to be mem- 
orial 705 
As after this, shall appeare more openlye 
All whole exprest, by dame Philosophye. 


102 
O trust of vertue, and of royall pleasure 
Of famous Poetes, many yeres ago 
O insaciate couetise, of the special treas- 
ure 710 
Of newe inuencion, of idlenes the fo 
We may you laude, and often praise also 
And specially, for worthy causes thre 
Whiche to this daye, we may bothe here 
and see 
103 
As to the first, your whole desire was 
set 715 
Fable to fayne, to eschue idlenes 
With ampliation, more cunnyng to get 
By the laboure, of inuentife busines 
Touchyng the trouthe, by couert likenes 
To disnull vice, and the vycious to blame 
Your dedes therto, exemplified the same. 


104 
And secondly, right well you did endite 
Of the worthy actes, of many a conquer- 
oure 
Throughe which labour, that you did so 
write 
Unto this daye, rayneth the honoure 725 
Of euery noble, and myghty warriour 
And for your labour, and your busy paine 
Your fame yet liueth, & shal endure cer- 
taine 
105 
And eke to praise you, we are greatly 
bounde 
Because our cunnyng, from you so pre- 


cedeth 730 
For you therof, were first originall 
grounde 


And vpon your scripture, our science en- 
sueth 

Your splendent verses, our lightnes re- 
nueth 

And so we ought, to laude and magnifie 


280 STEPHEN HAWES 


Your excellent springes, of famous 
poetry 735 


106 
But rude people, opprest with blindnes 
Against your fables, will often solisgise 
Suche is their minde, such is their folish- 
nes 
For they beleue, in no maner of wyse 
That vnder a coloure, a trouth may 
aryse ; 740 
For folyshe people, blynded in a matter 
Will often erre, when they of it do clatter 


107 
O all ye cursed, and suche euil foles 
Whose sightes be blynded, ouer all with 
foly 
Open your eyes, in the  pleasaunt 
scholes 745 
Of parfect cunnyng, or that you replye 
Against fables, for to be contrarye 
For lacke of cunnyng, no maruell though 


you erre 
In suche scyence, whiche is from you so 
farre 
108 
For now the people, whiche is dull and 
rude 750 


If that they do reade, a fatall scripture 

And can not moralise, the similitude 

Whiche to their wittes, is so harde and 
obscure 

Then will they saye, that it is sene in vre 

That nought do poetes, but depaynt and 
lye 755 

Deceiuyng them, by tongues of flattery. 


109 
But what for that, they can not defame 
The Poetes actes, whiche are in effect 
Unto them selues, remayneth the shame 
To disprayse that, which they can not 
correct 760 
And if that they, had in it inspect 
Than they would it praise, and often 
eleuate 
For it shoulde be to them, so delicate. 


[Chap. x, on Disposition, 12 stanzas, and 
most of chap. xi, on Elocution, 40 stanzas, 
are omitted. | 

158 


Cunnyng is lyght, and also pleasaunt 1700 
A gentle burden, wythout greuousnes 
Unto hym, that is ryght well appliaunt 


For to beare it, with all his busines 

He shall attaste, the welle of fruitefulnes 

Whiche Uirgil clarified, and also Tul- 
lius 1105 

With latyn pure, swete, and delicious. 


159 
From whence my master lidgate derified, 
The depured rethorike, in Englyshe lan- 
guage 
To make our tongue, so clearely purified 
That the vyle termes, shoulde nothing 
arage IIIO 
As like a pye, to chatter in a cage 
But for to speake, with rethorike form- 
ally 
In the good order, withouten vylany. 


160 

And who his bokes, list to heare or see 
In them he shall finde, elocution 7775 
With as good order, as any maye be 
Kepyng full close, the moralization 

Of the trouthe, of his great intencion 
Whose name is regestred, in remem- 

braunce 
For to endure, by long continuaunce 


[One more stanza completes xi. Chap xii, 
8 stanzas, treats of Pronunciation; chap. 
xili, 8 stanzas, of Memory. Two stanzas 
of chap. xiv are omitted; then:] 


180 
O pensyfe harte, in the stormy pery 
Mercury northwest, thou maist se ap- 
peare 1255 
After tempest, to gladde, thine emispery 
Hoyse vp thy sayle, for thou must drawe 
neare 
Towarde the ende, of thy purpose so 
cleare 
Remembre the, of the trace and daunce 
Of poetes olde, wyth all thy puruey- 
aunce. 1260 


181 
As moral Gower, whose sentencious dewe 
Adowne reflareth, with fayre golden 
beames 
And after Chaucers, all abroade dothe 
shewe 
Our vyces to clense, his depured streames 
Kindlyng our hartes, wyth the fiery 
leames 
Of morall vertue, as is probable 1266 
In all his bokes, so swete and profitable 


THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 281 


182 
The boke of fame, whiche is sentencious 
He drewe him selfe, on his owne inuen- 
tion 
And then the tragidies, so piteous 1270 
Of the nintene ladyes, was his translation 
And vpon his ymagination 
He made also, the tales of Caunterbury 
Some vertuous, and some glad and merye 


183 
And of Troylus, the piteous doloure 1275 
For his ladye Cresyde, full of doublenes 
He did bewayle, full well the langoure 
Of all his loue, and great vnhappines 
And many other bokes doubtles 
He did compyle, whose goodly name 1280 
In prynted bookes, dothe remayne in 
fame. 
184 
And after him, my master Lydgate 
The monke of bury, did him well apply 
Bothe to contryue, and eke to translate 
And of vertue, euer in especially 1285 
For he did compyle, then full ryally 
Of our blessed ladye, the conuersation 
Saynt Edmundes life, martred with 
treason 


185 

Of the fall of Princes, ryght wofully 
He did endite, in all piteous wise 1290 
Folowyng his auctoure, Bocas rufully 
A ryght great boke, he did truely com- 

pryse 
A good ensample, for vs to despyse 
This worlde so full, of mutabilitie 
In whiche no man, can haue a certainte. 


186 

And thre reasons, ryght greatly profit- 

able 
Under coloure, he cloked craftely 
And of the chorle, he made the fable 
That shitte the byrde, in a cage so closely 
The pamflete, sheweth it expreslye 1300 
He fayned also, the court of sapience 
And translated, with all his diligence. 


187 
The great boke, of the last destruction 
Of the citye of Troye, whylome so fam- 
ous 
Howe for a woman, was the confusion 
And betwene vertue, and the life vicious 
Of Gods and Goddesses, a boke solacious 


He did compyle, and the tyme to passe 
Of loue he made, the bryght temple of 
glasse 


188 
Were not these thre, greatly to com- 
mende 1310 
Which them applied, such bokes to con- 


triue 
Whose famous draughtes, no man can 
amend 
The tyme of slouthe, they did from them 
driue 
After their deathe, for to abide on lyue 
In worthy fame, by many a nacion 1315 
Their bokes, their actes, do make rela- 
tion 
189 
O master Lydgate, the most dulcet 
spryng 
Of famous rethoryke, wyth ballade royall 
The chefe originall, of my learnyng 
What vayleth it, on you for to call 1320 
Me for to ayde, nowe in especiall 
Sythen your bodye, is now wrapte in 
chest 
I pray God to geue, your soule good rest 


190 
O what losse is it, of suche a one 
It is to great truely, for me to tell 1325 
Sythen the tyme, that his life was gone 
In all this realme his pere did not dwell 
Aboue all other, he did so excell 
None sythe his tyme, in arte woulde suc- 
cede 
After their death, to haue for their 
mede 1330 


191 
But many a one, is ryght well expert 
In this cunnyng, but vpon aucthoritie 
They fayne no fables, pleasaunt and 
couerte 
But spende their time, in vaynefull vanitie 
Makyng ballades, of feruent amitie 1335 
As gestes and trifles, without fruitefulnes 
Thus all in vayne, they spende their busi- 
nes 


192 
I little or nought, expert in poetrye 
Of my master Lidgate, will folowe the 
trace 


1330. Insert fame after have, as in reprint of 
the 1555 text. 


282 STEPHEN HAWES 


As rhe so his name to magni- 

1340 

with Teeth little bokes, by Gods grace 

If in this worlde, I may haue the space 

The little cunnyng, that his grace me sent 

In tyme among, in suche wise shalbe 
spent. 


193 
And yet nothing, vpon presumption 1345 
My master Lydgate, I will not enuy 
But all onely, is myne intencion 
With suche laboure, my selfe to occupy 
As white by blacke, dothe shyne more 


clearely 
So shal their matters, appeare more pleas- 
aunt 1350 


Bisyde my draughtes, rude, and ignoraunt 


[The next chapter, xv, of 7 stanzas, deals 
with Arsmetrik. Chap. xvi, of music, 
opens :] 


201 
When splendent Phebus, in his middaye 
speare 
Was highe in Gemine, in the freshe sea- 
son 


Of iustye Maye, with golden beames 
cleare 

And darke Dyane, made declination 

When Flora florished, in this nacion 1405 

I called vnto minde, right inwardly 

The report of Fame, so muche ententiflye 


202 

Of la bell Pucell, in the tower musicall 
And ryght anone, vnto the tower I went 
Where I sawe, a temple made of Crys- 

tal 1410 
In whiche musyke, the lady excellent 
Played on base organes, expedient 
Accordyng well, vnto dyopason 
Dyapenthe, and eke dyetesseron 


[Seventy more stanzas complete the chap- 
ter, in which Graunde Amour sees and dances 
with La Bell Pucell, goes from her to a 
temple to bewail his passion and there is met 
by Counsel, who reminds him of the miser- 
ies of lovers of olden time, but advises him 
to pluck up heart. Chap. xviii, 40 stanzas, 
is a disputation between Graunde Amour 
and La bell Pucell. In chap. xix, 24 stanzas, 
she accepts his love, but at once departs 
in a ship. Graunde Amour is consoled by 
Counsel in chap. xx, 20 stanzas. In chap. 
xxi he betakes himself to Geometry, in xxii 
to Astronomy; chap xxiii is “Of the direct 


operation of Nature”, xxiv on the five wits, 
xxv on the supernal bodies. In chap. xxvi 
Graunde Amour comes to the tower of Chiy- 
alry, and then visits the temple of Mars, 
where he hears discourse on knighthood, is 
made knight, and sets out on horseback for 
adventures. In xxix he encounters a foolish 
dwarf, who accompanies him as his varlet. 
The portions of the work dealing with this 
dwarf, Godfrey Gobelive, are in couplets, and 
attempt a realistic use of Kentish dialect as 
well as a comic effect. Godfrey counsels 
Graunde Amour against women and mar- 
riage, and tells a clumsy story of Virgil 
the enchanter. They enter the temple of 
Venus, and Graunde Amour presents his bill 
of complaint. Venus writes a letter for him 
to La Bell Pucell, and the knight and his 
varlet continue their travels. Chap. xxxiii 
follows.] 


HOWE GRAUNDE AMOURE DISCOMFITED THE 
GYAUNT WITH THREE HEADES, AND WAS 
RECEIUED OF THREE FAYRE LADYES. 
CAPI. XXXIII 


538 
When golden Phebus, in the Capricorne 
Gan to ascende, fast vnto Aquary 4215 
And Janus bifrus, the croune had worn 
With his frosty bearde in January, 
When cleare Dyana, ioyned with Mercury 
The cristall ayre, and assured firmament 
Were all depured, without encumbre- 
ment. 4220 
539 
Forthe then I rode, at mine owne aduen- 
ture 
Ouer the mountaines, and the craggy 
rockes 
To beholde the countres, I had great 
pleasure 
Where corall growed, by ryght hye 
stockes 
And the Popingayes, in the tree toppes 
Then as I rode, I sawe me beforne 4226 
Beside a well hang, bothe a shelde and a 
horne 
540 
When I came there, adowne my stede I 
light 
And the faire bugle, I right well behelde 
Blasyng the armes, as well as I myght 
That was so grauen, vpon the goodly 
shelde 
First all of siluer, did appeare the felde 
With a rampyng Lyon, of fine golde so 
pure 4233 


THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 283 


And vnder the shelde, there was this 
scripture. 
541 


If any knight, that is aduenturous 

Of his great pride, dare the bugle blowe 

There is a gyaunt, bothe fierce and rigor- 
ious 

That with his might, shall him sone ouer- 
throw 

This is the waye, as ye shall nowe knowe 

To la bell Pucell, but withouten faile 4240 

The sturdy gyaunt, will geue you battaile. 


542 
When I the scripture, once or twise had 
reade 
And knewe therof, all the whole effect 
I blewe the horne, without any dreade 
And toke good hart, all feare to abiect 
Makyng me ready, for I did suspect 
That the great gyaunt, vnto me woulde 
haste 
When he had hearde me, blowe so loude 
a blast. 
543 


I alite anone, vpon my gentle stede 
About the well, then I rode to and fro 
And thought right well, vpon the ioyfull 
mede 4251 
That I shoulde haue, after my payne and 


wo 

And of my lady, I did thinke also 

Tyll at the last, my verlet did me tell 
Take hede quod he, here is a fende of hell 


544 
My greyhoundes leaped, and my stede did 
start 
My spere I toke, and did loke about 
With hardy courage, I did arme my hart 
At last I sawe, a sturdy gyaunt stoute 
Twelue fote of length, to feare a great 
route 4260 
Thre heades he had, and he armed was 
Bothe heades and bodye, all aboute with 
brasse 
545 


Upon his first heade, in his helmet crest 

There stode a fane, of the silke so fine 

Where was written, with letters of the 
best 

My name is falshode, I shall cause encline 

My neighbours goodes, for to make them 
myne 

Alway I get, their lande or substaunce 

With subtile fraude, deceypt, or variaunce 


546 
And when a knight, with noble chyualry 
Of la bell Pucell, shoulde attayne the 
grace 4271 
With my great falshode, I worke so sub- 
tilly 
That in her hart, he hath no dwellyng 
place 
Thus of his purpose, I do let the case 
This is my power, and my condicion 
Loue to remoue, by a great illusion 


547 
And of the seconde heade, in a silken tas- 
sell f 
There I sawe written, ymagination 
My crafty witte, is withouten fayle 
Loue for to bring, in perturbacion 4280 
Where la bell Pucell, woulde haue affec- 
tion 
To graunde amoure, I shall a tale deuise 
To make her hate him, and him to despise. 


548 
By my false witte, so muche ymaginatife 
The trouthe ful oft, I bryng in disease 


Where as was peace, I cause to be strife- 


I will suffer no man, for to liue in ease 
For if by fortune, he will be displease 
I shall of hym, ymagen suche a tale 
That out of ioye, it shall turne into bale. 


549 

And on the thirde heade, in a stremer 
grene 4291 

There was written, my name is pariury 

In many a towne, I am knowen as I 
wene 

Where as I list, I do great iniury 

And do forswere my selfe full wrong- 
fully 

Of all thinges, I do hate conscience 

But I loue lucre, with all diligence 


550 
Betwene two louers, I do make debate 
I will so swere, that they thinke I am 
true 4299 
For euer falshode, with his owne estate 
To a lady cometh, and sayeth to eschue 
An inconuenience, that ye do not rue 
Your loue is nought, ymagination know- 
eth 
I sweare in likewise, and anone she 
troweth 


284 STEPHEN HAWES 


551 

That we haue saied, is of very trouthe 

Her loue she casteth, right cleane out of 
minde 

That with her loue, she is wondersly 
wrough 

With fayned kindenes, we do her so 
blinde 

Then to her louer, she is full vnkinde 

Thus our thre powers, were ioyned in 
one 4310 

In this mighty gyaunt, many dayes agone 


552 
And when that I, had sene euery thing 
My spere I charged, that was very great 
And to this gyaunt, so fiercely commyng 
I toke my course, that I with him mette 
Breakyng my spere, vpon his first helmet 
And right anone, adowne my stede I light 
Drawyng my swerde, that was faire and 


bright. 
553 


Iclipped Clara prudence, that was faire 
and sure 

At the gyaunt I stroke, with all my vale- 
aunce : 4320 

But he my strokes, might right well en- 
dure 

He was so great, and huge of puysaunce 

His glaue he did, against me aduaunce 

Whiche was -iiii- fote, and more of 
cuttyng 

And as he was, his stroke dischargyng 


554 
Because his stroke, was heauy to beare 
I lept aside, from him full quickely 
And to him I ranne, without any feare 
When he had discharged, agayne full 


lightly 
He rored loude, and sware I shoulde 
abye 4330 


But what for that, I strake at him fast 
And he at me, but I was not agast. 


555 
But as he fought, he had a vauntage 
He was right hye, and I vnder him lowe 
Till at the last, with lusty courage 
Upon the side, I gaue him suche a blowe 
That I right neare, did him ouerthrowe 
But right anone, he did his mighte en- 
large 
That vpon me, he did suche strokes dis- 
charge 


556 
That I vnneth, might make resistence 4340 
Against his power, for he was so strong 
I did defend me, agaynst his vyolence 
And thus the battayle, dured full right 
long 
Yet euermore, I did thinke among 
Of la bell Pucell, whom I shoulde at- 
tayne 
After my battailles, to release my payne 


557 
And as I loked, I sawe then auale 
Fayre golden Phebus, with his beames 
redde 
Then vp my courage, I began to hale 
Whiche nighe before, was agone and 
deade 4350 
My swerde so entred, that the gyant 
bledde 
And with my strokes, I cutte of anone 
One of his legges, amiddes the thyghe 


bone. 
558 
Then to the grounde, he adowne did fall 
And vpon me, he gan to loure and glumme 
Enforsyng him, so for to ryse withall 
But that I shortly, vnto him did come 
With his thre heades, he spitte all his 
venyme 
And I with my sworde, as fast as coulde 
be 4359 
With all my force, cut of his heades 
three. 
559 


When I had so, obtayned the victory 

Unto me then, my varlet well sayed 

You haue demeaned you, well and 
worthely 

My greyhoundes lept, and my stede then 
brayed 

And then from farre, I sawe well arayed 

To me come ridyng, thre ladyes right 
swete 

Forthe then I rode, and did with them 
mete 

560 

The first of them, was called Ueritie 

And the seconde, good Operation 

The thirde also, yclipped Fidelitie 4370 

All they at once, with good opinion 

Did geue to me, great laudation 

And me beseched, with their hart entire 

With them to rest, and to make good 
chere. 


THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 285 


561 
I graunted them, & then backewarde we 
rode 
The mighty gyaunt, to se and beholde 
Whose huge bodye, was more then fiue 
cart lode 
Whiche lay there bledyng, that was al- 
most colde 
They for his deathe, did thanke me many 
a folde 
For he to them, was enemy mortall 4380 
Wherefore his thre heades, they toke in 
speciall 
562 
And then Ueritie, on the first fane 
Did set aloft, of falshode the heade 
And good Operacion, in likewise had tane 
Of ymagination, that full sore then 
bledde 
Upon his heade aloft, vpon his banner 
redde 
And in likewise, Fidelitie had serued 
Periuries heade, as he had well deserued 


563 
And with swete songes, and swete armony 
Before me they rode, to their fayre 


castell 4390 
So forthe I rode, with great ioye and 
glory 


Unto the place, where these ladyes did 
dwell 

Set on a rocke, beside a spryng or a 
well 

And fayre Obseruaunce, the goodly por- 
tresse 

Did vs receiue, with solemne gladnes 


564 
Then to a chamber, that was very bryght 
They did me leade, for to take mine ease 
After my trouble, and my great sturdy 
fight 
But thre woundes I had, causyng my dis- 
ease 4399 
My payne and wo, they did sone appease 
And healed my woundes, with salue aro- 
matike 
Tellyng me of a great gyaunt lunatike. 


565 
Whose name truely, was called Uariaunce 
Whom I shoulde mete, after my depart- 
yng 
These ladies, vnto me did great pleasaunce 
And in the meane while, as we were 
talkyng 


For me my supper, was in ordeynyng 
Thus when by temperaunce, it was pre- 
pared 
And then to it we went, and ryght well 
fared 
566 
Tell me quod Ueritie, if you be con- 
tent 4410 
What is your name, so hye aduenturous 
And who that you, into this coast hath 
sent 
Madame I saide, I was so amorous 
Of la bell Pucell, so fayre and beauteous 
La graunde amoure, truely is my name 
Whiche seke aduentures, to attayne the 
fame 
567 
A ha quod she, I thought asmuche before 
That you were he, for your great hardi- 
nes 
La bell Pucell, must loue you euermore 
Whiche for her sake, in your hye nobles 
Dothe suche actes, by chyualrous excesse 
Her gentle hart, may nothing denye 4422 
To rewarde your mede, wyth loue full 


feruently. 
568 
Thus did we passe time, in all maner of 
ioye 
I lacked nothing, that might make me 
solace 


But euermore, as noble Troylus of Troye 

Full oft I thought, on my faire ladyes 
face 

And her to se, a muche lenger space 

When time was come, to rest I was 


brought 
All to me longyng, there lacked right 
nought 4430 


569 
What shoulde I wade, by perambulucion 
My time is shorte, and I haue farre to 
sayle 
Unto the lande, of my conclusion 
The winde is east, right slowe without 
fayle 
To blowe my shippe, of diligent trauayle 
To the last ende, of my matter troublous 
With waues enclosed, so tempestuous. 


570 
Right in the morowe, when aurora clere 
Her radiaunt beames, began for to 
spreade 
And splendent Phebus, in his golden spere 


286 STEPHEN HAWES 


The crystall ayre, did make fayre and 
redde 4441 
Darke Dyane, declinyng pale as anye 
ledde 
When the little byrdes, sweetly did syng 
Laudes to their maker, early in the morn- 
yng. 
CAPIT. XXXIIII 


571 


Vp I arose, and did make me readye 

For I thought long, vnto my iourneys 
ende 

My greyhoundes lept, on me right merely 

To cheare me forwarde, they did conde- 
scende 

And the thre ladies, my cheare to amende 

A good breakefast, did for me ordayne 

They were right gladde, the gyaunt was 
slayne. 4451 


[The work extends through 45 chapters 
and a brief author’s “Excusation” at close; 
in all 759 stanzas, and, with the two pas- 
sages in couplets, of about 5765 lines. The 
story, beyond chap. xxxiii, takes Graunde 
Amour to the palace of Comfort under 
guidance of Dame Perseveraunce; he then 
vanquishes a giant with seven heads, con- 
tinues to the palace of Patience, and slays 
a dragon. As the smoke from the death- 
throes of the “blacke and tedyous” monster 
passes away, the mansion of La Bell Pucell 
becomes visible. The hero is welcomed, and 
the marriage ceremony performed. Many 
years of happiness ensue; then, says the 
author, Old Age warned me, soon Death 
arrested me, and all my life was spent. In 
chap. xlii Remembrance makes his epitaph, 
modeling it on Earth upon earth. Fame 
then praises him, comparing him to each of 
the Nine Worthies. Time combats Fame’s 
pretensions to confer immortality, and Eter- 
nity utters a closing moralization.] 


WILLIAM NEVILL 


THE CASTELL OF PLEASURE 


(Extracts) 
and 
DIALOGUE BETWEEN NEVILL AND COPLAND 


Nothing is known of William Nevill except that he was the second son of 
Richard Nevill, Baron Latimer. His elder brother John, third baron Latimer, 
who died in 1543, was the husband of that Katharine Parr who later became the 
sixth wife of Henry the Eighth. We infer from the words of Copland to Nevill, 
in the introductory stanzas, that this poem was written in Nevill’s youth; it was 
printed by Pepwell in 1518 (whence this text) and Dibdin describes a print, 
undated but ?earlier, by de Worde. From this dialogue it might be inferred that 
Copland was the responsible printer ; but as he was for some time employed by de 
Worde in an “editorial” capacity, it is possible that he could arrogate to himself 
the role of publisher in this discussion. 

The figure of Robert Copland, fl. 1508-1547, is of interest to the student of 
the later Transition. His own typographical work is not very good, and the dozen 
or so books from his press are nearly all slight. But he differs from his employer 
de Worde and resembles Caxton in his literary attempts and his translations; he 
goes further than Caxton, however, in his adoption of a “popular” tone when writ- 
ing his two independent works. These compositions, Jyl of Brentford’s Testament 
and The Hye Way to the Spyttel Hous, although unoriginal in plan and clumsy 
in execution, are frankly human in their material; and it is the double strain in 
Copland, the address to the two publics as in Skelton, which marks him so plainly 
with the stamp of the Transition. When he translates, and often in his prologues 
and epilogues to other men’s work, he uses affectations and Latinisms; he talks 
of “odiferaunt flowers”, of “misorned language”, of “the divine savitude of God”, 
etc. These are concessions to “high style’, which Chaucer’s Host might have 
scorned ; but at the next moment Copland can speak as directly, as practically, and 
with as broadly coarse an appeal as Skelton himself or Harry Bailly himself. 

Copland translated, from the French, the Kalender of Shepeherdes, the ro- 
mances of King Apollonius of Tyre, of Helyas, and of Ipomydon, the Secret of 
Secrets, three marriage poems, etc. He added a long verse-invocation to Chertsey’s 
Passion of Our Lord, appended stanzas on French dances to Barclay’s book on 
French pronunciation, and stanzas on Newfangleness to the 1530 print of Chau- 
cer’s Parlement of Foules; to William Walter’s translation of Boccaccio’s Guiscard 
and Sigismonda he wrote a prologue, epilogue, and various interspersed comments, 
and to this poem the introductory and final stanzas as here printed. Most of these 
productions are wooden, aimed at a public of aristocratic or didactic tastes ; but in 
his Hye Way, especially, there is some real feeling for nature as well as for human 
nature. And the same thing might be said of Nevill’s picture of the fall of evening, 
although he even more than Copland is deeply branded with the iron of Hawes’ 
formulae and Hawes’ vocabulary. 

Pepwell, the printer of this text of Nevill, followed the “editorial” procedure 
of Caxton and of Copland by prefixing to Anslay’s translation of the Cité des 


[ 287 ] 


288 WILLIAM NEVILL 


Dames a verse-prologue of four stanzas in rime royal ; this is reprinted by Fligel in 


Anglia 12 :13-14. 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST XII 


Dibdin, Typographical Antiquities: or the History of Printing in England, Scotland, 
and Ireland, etc. London, 1810-19, 4 vols. 

The unique copy of the de Worde print of this poem is discussed ii:371-2; 
it was then in the Roxburghe collection, dispersed 1812. Copland is 
discussed ibid., iii:111-126, and his stanzas appended to the Parlement 
of Foules are reprinted ibid., ii :268-70. 

Handlists of English Printers 1501-1556, London, 1895-1913, 4 vols., compiled by 


Gordon Duff, H. R. Plomer, etc. 


Plomer, Wynkyn de Worde and his Contemporaries, London, 1925. 

Copland’s Hye Way is reprinted in Utterson’s Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry, 
ii:1-50, and in Hazlitt’s Early Popular Poetry iv:17-72. For a discussion of the 
poem see Herford’s Literary Relations of England and Germany, 357-62. There 
is an extract from the poem in Fliigel’s Neuengl. Lesebuch, pp. 203-6. 

On Copland’s appendix to Barclay see Fligel ibid. 423; and for one of his marriage 
poems translated from the French see Hazlitt, op. cit., iv: 73-80, and also Wright’s 
Poems of Walter Mapes, Camden Society, 1841, p. 295, from the text in MS 
Bodl. Digby 181. This latter was long ascribed to Lydgate. 

Fligel’s Lesebuch gives one stanza of Nevill’s poem, at p. 17, and in the Notes, pp. 


374-5, prints Copland’s prologue-stanzas. 


Coplande the prynter to the auctour 
Your mynde consydered / & your good 
entent 
Theffecte regarded / in euery maner case 
Your cyrcunstaunce / and labour dyly- 
gent 
Who wyll construe / is of grete effycace 
(Y)our sentences morally tenbrace 
Concerneth reason of lauryate grauyte 
Yonge tender hertes / talecte with amyte 


Your aege also flourynge in vyrent 
youthe 

So to bestowe is gretely to commende 

Bookes to endyte of maters ryght vn- 


couthe 10 

Ensample gyuynge to all suche as pre- 
tende 

In tharte of loue theyr myndes to con- 
descende 

In termes fresshe / theyr courage to 
endewe 


Text from: The Castell of pleasure. The conuey- 
aunce of a dreme how Desyre went to ye castell 
of pleasure / Wherin was the gardyn of affecyon 
inhabyted by Beaute to whome he amerously 
expressed his loue / vpon the whiche supplyca- 
cion rose grete stryfe dysputacion / & argu- 
ment between Pyte & Dysdayne.—(Colophon) 
Printed by Harry Pepwell, London, 1518. (Brit. 
Mus. black letter, 18 leaves, no pagin., in sixes.) 


Not with rude toyes / but elegant and 
newe 


Yet ben there many that lytell regarde 

Your pleasures castell / inhabyte with 
Beaute 

And I am sure wold gyue but small 
rewarde 

For this your labour / and studyous dyte 

But had ye compyled some maner sub- 
tylte 

Lucre to gete / theyr neyghbour to be- 
gyle 20 

They wolde alowe it a perfyt dyscrete 
style 


Thauctour 
My boke of loue / belonges to no suche 
arte 
But to the pleasure / is his hoole affec- 


cyon 

Of gentyll people / whiche lyketh to take 
parte 

In pleasaunt youth / with amorous dylec- 
cyon 

Honour regarded / in clene cyrcunspec- 
cyon 

Layenge aparte / all wylfull vayne desyre 

To conforte them that brenne in louynge 
fyre 


THEN CASTELLI? OF “PLEASURE 289 


Copland 

Bokes of loue innumerable prynted be 

I mene of ladyes / and many a hardy 
knyght 30 

Withoute regarde of sensuall nycete 

In loue exployntynge / truly with all 
theyr myght 

But loue of golde / these dayes blyndeth 
the syght 

Of men and women / hauynge theyr 
chefe delyte 

Onely for mede to do theyr appetyte. 


Thauctour 
Emprynt this boke / Coplande at my 
request 
And put it forth to euery maner state 
It doost no good lyenge styll in my chest 
To passe the tyme some wyll bye it algate 
Cause it is newe / compyled now of late 
At leest way yonge folke / wyll gladly 
seke recure 41 
Beauty to gete in the toure of pleasure. 


[Copland] 

At your instaunce / I shall it glad(l)y 
impresse 

But the vtteraunce I thynke wyll be but 
smale 

Bokes be not set by / theyr tymes is past 
I gesse 

The dyce and cardes / in drynknge wyne 
and ale 

Tables / cayles / and balles / they be 
now set a sale 

Men lete theyr chyldren vse all suche 
harlotry 48 

That byenge of bokes they vtterly deny 


Finit prologus 


En passant le temps sans mal penser 
Tornyng & trauersyng hystoryes vn- 
ste(d) faste 
In Ouydes bokes of transformacyon 
It was my fortune and chaunce at the 
laste 
In ouertornyng of pe leues to se in what 
facyon 
Phebus was inflamyd by inspyracyon 
Of cruell cupyd to hym immercyable 
Whiche of hym was worthy no commen- 
dacyon 
Shewyng hymselfe alwayes deceyuable 
Therfore I wolde gladly yf I were able 
The maner playnly and in few wordes 
dysclose 10 


How phebus and cupyd togyder were 
compenable 
Fyrst it to shewe I wyll me dyspose 


Phebus set on pryde and hault in corage 

Spake these wordes of grete audacyte 

Cupyde thou boy of yonge and tender 
aege 

How mayst thou be so bolde to compare 
with me 

These arowes becomes me as thou mayst 
clerely se 

Wherwith I may wounde bothe man and 
beste 

And for that at all creatures be subgect 
to the 

So moche is thy power lesse than myn at 


eche feste 20 
Well well sayd cupyde it lyketh you to 
geste 
This sayd / he assended to the mount 
pernassus 


On the hyght his armis shortly abrode 
he keste 

And sayd I trust I shall this in haste 
dyscusse. 


For a profe he toke forth of his arowy 
quyuer 

A golden darte with loue ryght peny- 
trable 

Made sharp at the poynt that it myght 
enter 

With it he stroke phebus with a stroke 
ryght lamentable 

It to resyste he was weyke and vnable 

The stroke of his power who can or may 
resyste 30 

But he must obey / and to loue be agre- 
able 

Constreygned by cupyde which may 
stryke whom he lyst 

An other darte he toke soone in his fyste 

Contrary to thoder ledyn blont and heuy 

With this he stroke Phebus loue or she 
wyste 

So that the more he desyred the more 
she dyd deny 


Her name was daphnys which was de- 
uoyed of loue 

By dame saunce mercy which made hym 
to complayne 

Cupyde in sondry wyse his power dyde 
proue 

On thone with loue on thoder with dys- 
dayne 40 


290 WILLIAM NEVILL 


Thone dyde fle thoder wolde optayne 

Thone was glad thoder was in wo 

Thone was pencyfe and oppressyd with 
payne 

Thoder in Joy cared not though it were 
so 

By fere and dysdayne she dyd hym ouergo 

Lyke to an hare she ranne in haste 

He folowed lyke a grehounde desyre 
wrought hym wo 

But all was in vayne his labour was but 
waste. 


The nyght drew nye the day was at a 
syde 

My herte was heuy I moche desyred rest 

Whan without comfort alone I dyd abyde 

Seynge the shadowes fall from the hylles 
in the west 52 

Eche byrde vnder boughe drewe nye to 
theyr nest 

The chymneys from ferre began to smoke 

Eche housholder went about to lodge his 
gest 

The storke feringe stormes toke the 
chymney for a cloke 

Eche chambre & chest were sonne put 
vnder locke 

Curfew was ronge lyghtes were set vp in 
haste 

They pt were without for lodgynge soone 
dyde knocke 

Which were playne precedentes pt 2 
was clerely paste. 


Thus a slepe I fell by a sodayne chaunce 

Whan I lacked lyght alone without com- 
forte 

My sore study with slouthe dyde me 
enhaunce 

Myn eyes were heuy my tonge without 
dysporte 

Caused many fantasyes to me to resorte 

My hert was moche musynge my mynde 
was varyaunt 

So I was troubled with this vngracyous 
sorte 

That my herte & mynde to slouthe short- 
ly dyde graunt 68 

About the whiche whyles I was atend- 
aunt 

Sodaynly came Morpheus & at a brayde 

Not affrayd but lyke a man ryght valy- 
aunt 

Couragyously to me th(e)se wordes he 
sayde. 


Morpheus 


Well knowen it is and noysed for a trothe 

Though perchaunce it hath not attayned 
yet to your audyence 

How Desyre in mynde hath made a 
solempne othe 75 

Beaute to serue without resistence 

So to contynue he dothe ryght well pre- 
pence 

Durynge his lyfe with loue stedfast and 
sure 

In parfyte loue to kepe one contynuaunce 

It is his mynde to do her suche pleasure. 


On faruent loue he sette holy his mynde 

Loue is his pleasure yet loue putteth hym 
to payne 82 

Moche rule I ensure you hath nature and 
kynde 

In hym as is possyble in one to remayne 

He wold fayne haue release and dare 
not yet complayne 

Howbe it to suche a poynte he is now 
brought 

That eyther to shewe his minde he must 
shortly be fayne 

Or elles his Joye is clerely solde and 
bought. 


For the whiche it is done me to vnder- 
stande 

That he wyll shortly now expresse is 
entent 

And this they say he wyll take on eae 

To go to her presence wherfore be dyly- 
gent 

And walke with me and be obedyent 

And I shall soone knowe how he shall 
spede 

I must of duety holde me content 

So ye supporte me alwaye whan I haue 
nede. 


The montayne of courage 


This sayd sodaynly by a chaunce repent- 
ine 

I was ascendynge a god(e)ly montayne 

About the whiche be sonne ouer eche syde 
dyd shyne 

Wherof the colour made my herte ryght 
fayne 100 

To se fine golden valeys bothe fayre and 
playne 

But whan I to the toppe was nye auaunced 


—He, CASTELE OF | PLEASURE 291 


None of my Joyntes coude to gyder con- 
tayne 

For Joy my herte lepyd and my body 
daunced. 


What call ye this hyll I pray you tell 

This is the mountayne of lusty courage 

This hath ben inhabyted of many a rebell 

As vnkyndnes / enmyte / dysdayne / 
and dotage 108 

But now they be dystroyed by marcyall 
apparage 

So that now adayes here dwelleth none 

Yet dysdayne hath goten a more stately 
aduauntage 

For in the castell of plesure she troubles 
many one. 


Now goodly Justes here on they excer- 
cyse 

By thactyfnes of many a champyon 

And these well gargeled galeryes they 
dyde deuyse 

To thentent that ladyes myght haue pros- 
peccyon 

And to suche as were worthy graunte loue 
& affeccyon 

And also whan theyr lust were theyr 
courage to vse 

To daunce amonges theym they toke a 
dyreccyon 

As they myght well and not theym selfe 
abuse 120 


Whan I aduerted of these galeryes pe 
quadrant facyon 

The meruelous mountayne so well made 
playne 

Me thought that syth the incarnacyon 

Was neuer seen a more goodly mountayne 

For Joy my herte leped I was so fayne 

Of it I was so ioyous and so well appade 

I coude in no wyse my mynde refrayne 

To suche tyme this as prayse of it I 
made 


O Puyssaunt courage chefe cause of com- 


forte 
Thou mayst well be nye the castell of 


pleasure 130 

O hyll thupholder of all doughty dys- 
porte 

Of marcyall manhode thou art the treas- 
ure 

Out of thy bankes is goten the vre 


That causeth the pastymes of parfyte 
prowes 


O mountayne god graunt the long to 
endure 

Syth thou art the lanterne of lastynge 
lustynes 


So forth we walked on that goodly hyll 
To that we came to the bankes syde 

To se the fayre castell than we stode styll 
And to se the rennynge ryuer there we 


dyd abyde 140 
To haue a lowe water we taryed the 
tyde 
The name of this water then thus he dyde 
expresse 


To dystroye chaungeable & people op- 
pressyd with pryde 

They call this water the lauer of lowly- 
nes 


On the stones of stedfastnes rennes this 
water clere 

To ouercome folkes chaungeable & proud 
of hert & minde 

Suche men shall be put in ryght grete 
daunger 

For than swellyth the water contrary to 
his kynde 

So that they can not the steppynge stones 
fynde 

By the meane wherof they be troubled 
so sore 150 

With the wylde wawes waueryng with 
the wynde 

That for lake of helpe they are ryght 
soone forlore. 


But blessyd be god we came in good 
season 

Well passe this same I trust we shall in 
haste 

Be not to slowyshe but arme you with 
reason 

How ye shall gete ouer in mynde afore 
well caste 

To be to forwarde ye may soone make 
waste 

So forth we went in pacyent humylyte 

And whan I this water was well past 

I loked backe and sayd this in breuyte. 160 


O lowly lauer slydyng ou(e)r the stones 
of stedfastnes 
O ryall ryuer whiche proueth perfytely 


292 WILLIAM NEVILL 


All proude people that delytes in double- 


nes 
Thou drownest them in thy stremys ryght 
shortly 164 


Thou hast a more praysable proprety 

Then euer hadde the well of helycon 

The moder of mekenes conserve the per- 
petually 

Syth thou arte the moder water of ver- 
tues many one 


So whan I towarde the castell dyrected 


my loke 
Whiche then was not from me a full 
stones caste 170 


I remembred that I had redde in many 
a boke 

That in this place of plesure were many 
a stormy blast 

Notwithstandynge I thought all perylles 


had be past 
Whan I sawe of this castell the royall 
gates 


Yet afore I knewe that pleasour coude not 
last 

There as dysdayne is in fauour with 
estates. 


This royall castell was on eche syde 
quadraunt 

Gargaled with goodly grehoundes & 
beastes many one 

The tyrannous tygre the stronge & 
myghty elephaunt 

With a castell on his backe whiche he 


bare alone 180 
The lyons fyry eyes with rubyes there 
shone 


[No gap in text] 


The golden grephyn with a rufull mone 
Stode there as desolate of lyuely creature. 


The walles were allectyng of adumantes 

The wyndowes of crystall were well for- 
tyfyed 

And as I was lokynge on these ele- 
phauntes 

On the gates two scryptures I aspyed 

Theym for to rede my mynd than I 
applyed 

Wryten in gold and indye blew for folkes 
fortheraunce 190 

They betoken two wayes as after well I 
tryed 


These scryptures as I remembre thus 
sowned in substaunce 


Who as in to this place wyll take his 
entrynge 

Myst of these wayes haue fre eleccyon 

Yf he lyst be lusty lepe daunce and senge 

Or yf in worldly welthe he set his affec- 
cyon 

In honour ryches or prosperous inuen- 
cyon 

He shall be conueyed yf he wyll so ensewe 

Elles to the scrypture vnderneth let hym 
gyue intencyon 

Whiche is set out in letters of indye 
blewe. 200 


Whose doth sette his pleasure and delyte 

His faruent herte to conioyne stedfastly 

On the loue of Beaute a blossom ryght 
whyte 

Or on ony of her ladyes lete hym enten- 
tyfely 

Be content his mynde and courage to 
apply 205 

To suche as to conduyt all folkes lyeth in 
wate 

For none can without theyr leue passe 
theym by 

Nor yet attayne to beautes hygh estate 


This sayd my mynde musyd gretely 

Whiche of these wayes I was best to take 

Wherby I called to remembraunce shortly 

How Hercules of aege but tendre and 
wake 

Newe at yeres of dyscresyon his mynde 
sore brake 

Whan he sawe two wayes pe one of ver- 
tute be oder of plesure 

And of the nyght it caused hym ryght oft 
to wake 215 

By cause he knewe not the waye of per- 
fyte mesure. 


Yet suche was his fortune ryght happy 
was his chaunce 

Whiche toke the way so moche praysable 

This to plesure and welth dothe men 
auaunce 

This other dooth enduce one to be amy- 
able 220 

I am hereby moche troubled my mynde 
is vnstable 

What remedy shall I fynde to make my 
mynd stedfast 


THE CASTELL OF PLEASURE 293 


I wyll endeuer me to reason to be con- 
formable 

All my wyttes serched I trust it so to 
caste 


This golden scripture is ryght moche 
pleasaunte 

And hath dampned the eyes of men many 
one 

I am sore troubled to whiche waye 
sholde I graunte 

Syth I am now here in maner as man 
alone 

This loue lasteth whan all ryches is gone 

Therfore I thynke it best with it to be 
content 230 

Consyderynge that fewe theyr mysfor- 
fortune wyll mone 

That haue mo faces than hertes as dayly 
is euydent. 


[He chooses the “surest” way and enters 
the castle, where he is welcomed by Com- 
fort——“Wheder wyll ye to the hall or to 
Beaute now expresse.” He wishes to go 
into Beauty’s presence; Kindness must then 
lead him, and Comfort returns to the gate. 
They enter the garden of Affection, “enuy- 
roned with emyraudes.” He misses Morphe- 
us, sees him talking with Fantasy, and Kind- 
ness turns him over to Fantasy. They pro- 
ceed, and he sees the tree of Pyramus and 
Thisbe, which fills him with sadness. Fan- 
tasy discourses to him, with mythological 
examples, on the necessity of attaining pleas- 
ure through pain. He is then turned over 
to Eloquence, and through the boughs of 
an arbor they hear Fantasy ask Beauty if 
Desire may approach. The transition is very 
clumsily managed, viz.] 


Than she talked to me of Vlysses 

Thellynge me that he was a man ryght 
eloquent 

Than to lene at the herbar where Beaute 
sat at ese 

It pleased Eloquence / yet the bowes 
were so bent 

That we coude not se through / yet 
fantasy was present 

As we well herde by her communyca- 
cyon 430 

And shewynge the maner of desyres en- 
tent 


She ordered her wordes moche after this 
facyon. 


[Desire approaches Beauty and begs her 
favor. Before she can reply, Disdain cen- 
sures his boldness. Pity intervenes on his 
behalf, and she and Disdain quote mytho- 
logical examples against each other. They 
are interrupted by the arrival of Credence, 
who has been summoned by Fantasy. Beauty 
thanks her, and accepts Desire. Desire re- 
joices in three stanzas beginning “O precyous 
pryncesse of preelecte pulcrytude.” Disdain 
goes away disgusted; all the lovers rejoice, 
and the noise causes Morpheus to vanish. 
The author awakes, and resolves to write 
his dream, that all may know this world is 
but fleeting. The third stanza after his 
awakening is:] 


Where is Sampson for all his grete 
strength 830 

Or where is the sage Salomon for all 
his prudence 

Deth hath and wyll deuoure all at length 

for where is Vlysses for all his eloquence 

Where become Crassus for his ryches and 
opulence 

Where is Lucres for all her chastyte 

Where is Alexander whiche subdued to 
his obedyence 

Moche of the worlde by his marcyalte 

Where is Tully whiche had pryncypalyte 

Ouer all oratours in parfyte rethoryke 

Where be all the foure doctours of dy- 
uynyte 840 

Where is Arystotyll for all his phyloso- 
phy & logyke 


[Having considered the matter, the author 
sees :] 


That this amerous study of Cupyde and 
Phebus 

Was cause therof which coude not be 
denyed 

Therfore in mynde I dyde playnly dyscus 

That I wolde study nomore and specyally 
thus 

I wold muse nomore in the euenynge so 


late 875 
But conclude this shortly in wordes com- 
pendyous 


Lest I shold be as I was erste in myser- 
able estate 
V olunte ie ay mats ie ne 
veulx mon cuer chaunger. 


294 WILLIAM NEVILL 


| Thenuoye. 
{Go humble style submytte the to cor- 

reccyon 

Be not so bolde to presume to the 
presence 

Of ony but suche as be enuyronde with 
effeccyon 

Let theym arrect theyr eeres to rebuke 
thy neglygence 


To theym thou perteynest of due con- . 


gruence 5 

Let theym more curyously thy rurall 
termes affyle 

How thou sholdest be amended they 
haue best intellygence 

Therfore submytte the to theym my 
poore & humble style 


§ yf ony that be more sad delytynge 
in grauyte 
And yf forther age wold agayne the 
gyue euydence 10 
Sayng they were wel ocupyed bt were 
troubled with be 
Wrote not Ouyde in as low style which 
yf they prepence 
They may thynke pt I to auoyde of 
slouthe be vyolence 
Made thys without cloke or rethorycall 
language 
Thynkynge that I ought not of due 
conuenyence 15 
Wryte the in so hyghe style as wyse 
storyes and sage. 
Finis. 
Lenuoy de Robert Copland lymprimeur. 
A ton aucteur / vaten petit liuret 
Et luy prier / dexcuser ton empraint 
Ce fault ya / de par moy incorrect 
Par sa copie souuent iestois constraint 
De diuigner / ou lencre cestoit destaint 
Ce nonobstant / ien ay fait mon debuoir 


Pour son plesir / dassembler blanc et 
noir. 


Treshonoure filz / du seigneur latimer 

Surnomme Neuyl / de noble parentaige 

O maistre guillawume / en sens at vertu 
cler 

Aucteur de ce / comme bon clerc et 
saige 

A vous / ie recommande cest ouuraige 

De moy indigne / si non par vostre suf- 
fraunce 

En ce monstrant / ma folle ignoraunce. 


R. Coplande to thauctour. 


Take ye in gre / o worthy mayster myne 

This rubryke frensshe / in verses incor- 
rect 

No meruayle is / though theyr speche be 
not fyne 

For in scole nor countre / I neuer toke 
effect 20 

And from your boke / let them be vnde- 
iect 

Without your lycence / yf I dyde them 
impresse 

Pardon I praye you / of this my homely- 
nesse 


En passant le temps sans mal pencer 
Quod Coplande. 


ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


Alexander Barclay has been claimed as both Scotsman and Englishman; it 
seems probable that he was born, as his contemporary Bullein asserts, to the north 
‘of the Tweed, but he spent much of his long life ( ?1475-1552) in England, in the 
. service of the Church. His first known literary work was an (anonymous) para- 
phrase of Gringoire’s Chasteau de Labeur, printed in England about 1505 and 
twice later. This poem, nearly all in eight-line stanzas, is a dull didactic dream in 
which the troubled author is browbeaten by various personified Virtues and Vices; 
neither in subject nor in execution has it interest for the modern student, although 
it apparently commanded some public in its own time. A far greater success was 
-Barclay’s next undertaking, the paraphrase of Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools, 
' dedicated by the translator to his patron Bishop Cornish, who had presented him to 
a chaplaincy in Devonshire ; the work was published in 1509. 
Barclay seems to have spent some years in Devonshire at St. Mary Ottery, 
a town known to modern readers as the original of “Clavering St. Mary’s” in 
Thackeray’s Pendennis. Perhaps at the death of his patron Cornish in 1513, per- 
haps earlier, Barclay left Devonshire and joined the Benedictine monastery of 
‘Ely. There he translated, for Sir Giles Alington, Mancini’s Latin treatise entitled 
~The Mirror of Good Manners. It is noteworthy that he refused the first task 
offered him by his new patron, the “abridging to amende and from corrupte Eng- 
lishe in bettar to translate” Gower’s Confessio Amantis. The reasons assigned for 
his refusal were the wanton character of some of Gower’s stories, and the “im- 
portable labour” of the task for Barclay’s ““weake wittes” and “hoare heres”. The 
Eclogues were not at this time published or completed; but the Ship of Fools had 
made for Barclay a great reputation in England, so great that in 1520 Sir Nicholas 
Vaux, writing from the Field of the Cloth of Gold, begged Wolsey to send over 
Master Barclay the Black Monk and Poet, “to devise histories and convenient 
-raisons to flourisshe the buildings and banquet house withal.”’ We recall the pageant 
speeches, the tapestry verses, and the stanzas for towering cakes or “soteltees” at 
-royal dinners, written by an elder monk, and see that Barclay had inherited the 
‘functions of Lydgate. 

While at Ely Barclay probably translated the Life of St. George, which is 
dedicated to Bishop West of Ely; and it is possible that the Eclogues, which con- 
tain references to West’s predecessor Bishop Alcock, were translated during Bar- 
clay’s residence there. How long that residence lasted we do not know, but Bar- 

- clay eventually left Ely for Canterbury and the Franciscan order. Six years before 
his death, when a man of seventy, he received from different patrons two vicarages 
in the Established Church; and in the year of his death he was given a Church 
appointment in London. The Life of St. Thomas which bears Barclay’s name may 
have been done while he was a monk at Canterbury; but how he spent his later 
years, or what was the reason for his transfer of monastic allegiance, we do not 
know. The only detail of his character that emerges from the flat dulness of gen- 

‘erality is his lively antipathy to Skelton. This breaks out at the close of the Ship 
of Fools and in the Eclogues; had the Contra Skeltonum been preserved, which 
Bale includes among Barclay’s works, we might have known more of the relation 
between the two professional poets. 


[ 295 ] 


296 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


Barclay’s list of patrons is a solid one; to the various Bishops who employed 
his pen and to Sir Giles Alington we must add the duke of Norfolk, for whom 
Barclay executed a prose translation of Sallust and compiled a French handbook. 
Norfolk’s second son, Lord Edward Howard, is commemorated in the fourth 
Eclogue. 

The Eclogues were not so popular with Barclay’s own time as was the Ship 
of Fools; but his reputation now rests pretty equally on the two works. In both 
cases, although a translator, Barclay introduced a new literary form among his 
countrymen as definitely as did Wyatt or Surrey; in both cases, although a trans- 
lator, Barclay sets forth his own views and makes his own excursus at will, like 
all medieval paraphrasers. He was restricted in the tone of these additions by his 
obedience to clerical tradition; yet his descriptions of contemporary manners in 
the satire and his landscape-glimpses in the Eclogues have some independent value. 
As is true of Nevill, and still more of Gawain Douglas, we catch hints of an on- 
ward-pressing reality through the heavy veil of the conventional. 

Barclay was no “laureate” praised of Erasmus, but he very possibly com- 
manded as much Latin and French as did Skelton. He makes no restless parade 
of authorities, and does no juggling with words in Skelton’s manner; he is too 
much the decorous Churchman for Skelton’s horseplay, far more like Lydgate 
than like his unruly raffish contemporary. Barclay seems indeed to have known 
and used the work of Lydgate. Some influence of the Fall of Princes may be 
traced in the Ship of Fools, and in Jamieson’s edition, i1:189, we find a reference 
to “Bochas”. The moralizing envoys which Barclay adds after the separate chap- 
ters of the Ship of Fools are perhaps modeled on Locher’s less frequent summaries ; 
but the attempt to differentiate the envoy metrically by using an eight-line stanza 
instead of a seven-line reminds us of Lydgate’s occasional procedure in the Fall of 
Princes. It is, however, infrequently that Barclay writes more than the single 
stanza as an envoy, and he has very little of Lydgate’s refrain or attempted tour 
de force in rime; see as exceptions Jamieson’s edition, i:266-68, ii1:164, 284-85. 
Rare also is the echo of Lydgate’s words ; but compare Jamieson i:219— 


There is concorde, here is no thynge but stryfe, 
There is all rest, and here is care and payne 


with the Fall of Princes 1: 666 ff.— 


There is delit and heer is sorwe & care 
There is ioie and heer is heuynesse. 


The phraseology as to universal Death and his dance, Jamieson, ii:119, etc., may 
owe something to the Dance of Paul’s and the verses of Lydgate. 

But Barclay’s vocabulary and verse-management differ from those of Lyd- 
‘ gate. Although Barclay works some words hard,—enormuty, inconvenient, laud- 
able,—he does not strain them as Lydgate strains cast, caught, recure. He is as 
free from cumbrous Latinisms as was Lydgate; words like caduke and fatigate 
are rare; but also rare are padding phrases, which cannot be said of Lydgate. 
. And Barclay’s syntax is clear, which is not one of Lydgate’s merits. In the verse- 
management of the Ship of Fools or of the Eclogues there is little skill or variety ; 
Barclay’s most interesting departure from equivalent line-work is in the song of 
Lust (see Jamieson ii: 290-92), which should be compared with the Palladius pro- 


PAE SHIE‘OF FOOLS 297 


logue and links here printed p. 202, with the Kyrie of the Lover’s Mass, and with 
two passages in Chaucer’s Anelida, 272-80, 333-41. There is also in the Ship of 
Fools (Jamieson ii:317-21) a passage in four-beat lines. Generally speaking, Bar- 
clay’s rhythm, although without technical beauty or conscious management, runs 
free from the Lydgatian gasping half-line movement and the Lydgatian harshness 
of repeated variant. 

To this stylistic mixture of a small positive improvement with a large nega- 
~ tive inertia, Barclay’s substance corresponds in its mingled quality. With plenty 
- of interest in the living beings around him, in the homely actualities of street life 
* or rural life, Barclay has no wider Renaissance feeling, no wonder, no curiosity, 
- no eagerness. He is as much against study of the world as he is against astrology 
and alchemy; he is so against excess in all things that he represses enthusiasm. 
‘He has no sense of humor and no sense for values; he presents his material hu- 
-manly to a certain extent, but not humanely. We are indeed in a larger and more 
normally furnished room than Hawes would open to us; but its windows do not 
admit the air of the world. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 


There is no known manuscript of any of Barclay’s works. The printed eds. are :— 
The Castell of Labour. By Vérard, Paris ?1503. Only fragments known. 
By Pynson ?1505. By de Worde 1506. (Brit. Mus., ULC.) By de Worde 
21510. (Brit. Mus.). 
Facsimile of the 1506 text for the Roxburghe Club, 1905, with introd. by A. W. 
Pollard and with the 1501 French text of Gringoire. 
The Shyp of Foles of the Worlde. Printed by Pynson 1509. (Brit. Mus., Bodl.). 
Reprinted by Jamieson as below p. 299. Used in Fliigel’s Neuengl. Lesebuch, 
and here. 
Printed as “Stultifera Nauis—The Ship of Fools” by Cawood, London, 1570. 
To this Cawood appended the Eclogues and the Mirror of Good Manners, 
with no separate title-page. His text of the Ship is used by Zarncke as be- 
low for citations; for the other poems see as below. 
The Egloges (i-iii only). No date nor printer. Unique? see Jamieson, p. ciii. 
The Fourthe Eglogge . Pynson, no date. Unique? see Jamieson, p. ciii. 
The Fyfte Eglog. . de Worde, no date. ?1509. (Brit. Mus.) This last reprinted 
for the Percy Society, ed. Fairholt, 1847. 
The Egloges (i-iii only), John Herforde, no date. 
The Egloges (i-iii only), Humfrey Powell ?1548. (Brit. Mus.) Prologue is here 
reprinted from this text. 
Certayne Egloges (i-v) in Cawood as above, 1570. Cawood’s text reprinted by 
the Spenser Society, 1885. Cawood is used here for Eclogue iv. 
The Introductory to Wryte and to Pronounce Frenche. W. Copland, 1521. (Bodl. 
unique.) Parts are reprinted in Ellis’ Early Engl. Pronunciation, iii :803-13. 
The Myrrour of Good Manners. Pynson, no date, 71523. (Brit. Mus.) Printed by 
Cawood 1570 as above. His text reprod. Spenser Society as above. 
Cronycle compyled: by Sallust. Twice by Pynson, n.d. Both in Brit. Mus. 
and in ULC; one in Bodl. Brit. Mus. dates ?1520. 
Cronicle of Warre. The same work, corrected by T. Paynell. Printed by Waley 1557. 
(Brit. Mus.) 
The Lyfe ——of——Saynt George. Pynson, ca. 1530. A bit reprinted in G. Macken- 
zie’s Lives and Characters of the Most Eminent Writers of the Scots Nation, 
Edinburgh, 1708-22, 3 vols., ii:291. 























298 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


The Lyfe of Saynte Thomas. Pynson ?1520. (Brit. Mus.) 


Ascribed to Barclay are a treatise on Holy Church oppressed by the French King, 
and a transl. of Friar Haython’s Travels; see Jamieson as p. 299 below. 


Extracts from Barclay are in J. Sibbald’s Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, Edinburgh, 
1802, ii:391-438 (part of Eclogue v, and from the Ship of Fools). Fliigel’s Neuengl. 
Lesebuch has, pp. 90-94, extracts from prol. to eclogues, prol. to ecl. v, a bit from ecl. v; 
on pp. 104-110 are extracts from the Ship. Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper, in her very inter- 
esting Muses’ Library, London, 1737, included, pp. 33-44, some thirty stanzas of the 
Ship of Fools, with introd. note. 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST XIII 
For Barclay’s life see :— 
Jamieson in the introd. to his ed. of the Ship of Fools, as on p. 299 here. 
A. W. Ward in the Dict. Nat. Biog. 
W. E. A. Axon on Alexander Barclay and Manchester, in the Proceed. Man- 
chester Literary Club, 1895. 
J. R. Schultz in JEGcPhil 18:360-68, reprinting Bale’s life of Barclay and 
valuable bits from Brewer’s Letters and Papers of—Henry VIII. 


On his work in general see:— 
Warton-Hazlitt, Hist. Eng. Poetry iii:189 ff.; Morley’s Eng. Writers, vii, 
chap. 4; Koelbing in Cambr. Eng. Lit., iii, chap. 4; Berdan in ModLangReview 
8 :289-300 and in chap. 4 of his Early Tudor Poetry. See R.'M. Alden’s Rise 
of Formal Satire, Univ. Penna., 1899, and S. M. Tucker’s Verse Satire in Eng- 
land before the Reformation, Columbia Univ., 1908. 


On the Ship of Fools and the Eclogues see under those heads below. 


THE SHIP OF FOOES 


When the Narrenschiff of the German Sebastian Brant appeared, in 1494, 
printing was still a new art, and had until then been used to preserve the monu- 
-ments of an ecclesiastical and an aristocratic past. The Narrenschiff, as Max 
‘Miiller remarks, was “the first printed book to treat of contemporaneous events 
-and living persons”; and although to us today its satire seems very general and 
its imaginative powers very limited, it came to fifteenth-century Germany and 
France as a new and interesting departure from the conventional methods so long 
in vogue. It was immediately translated into Latin by Locher, with the consent 
and supervision of Brant; this Latin was used by Riviere for his French verse- 
translation of the same year, 1497 ; and Dutch and English, as well as other French 
and Latin paraphrases, attest the widespread appeal of the new form. Of these para- 
.phrases the English was the latest, in 1509; in July of that year de Worde issued 
a prose translation by Henry Watson, done from Drouyn’s French prose rendering 
of Riviére at the bidding of Margaret countess of Richmond; and in December 
‘Richard Pynson issued the much more elaborate work of Barclay. 

Fraustadt (as below) and Berdan (as ante) opined that Barclay used his 
sources exactly in the order in which he himself names them,—‘Latin, Frenche, 
and Doche”. He had before him Locher, Riviére, and Brant; and according to 
these students, the Latin is constantly his original, the French is often used, and 
the German rarely. This statement has been amended by the Dutch Franciscan 
scholar Fr. A. Pompen, who presents detailed proof that Barclay at no time made 
use of Brant, but depended almost entirely on the Latin, with some traces of 


THE SHIP OF FOOLS 299 


-Riviére. It is Locher whom Barclay calls his “Actour”; and it is Locher’s Latin 
. which he prefixes, chapter by chapter, to his work. The admirable edition of Bar- 
clay’s Ship of Fools by Jamieson, which reproduces the woodcuts of 1497, does 
not reprint these Latin passages, thus depriving the modern student of the possi- 
bility of watching Barclay’s method of work; and the same economy has of ne- 
cessity ruled here. 
Barclay’s poem is even less a “translation” of Locher than Lydgate’s Fall 
-of Princes was a translation of Laurent and Boccaccio. Like Lydgate, like all 
medieval and many modern translators, Barclay followed the general plan of his 
original, brought forward the same figures, and narrated substantially the same 
‘things of them; but the verbal relation of his text to its antecedent is extremely 
‘free, and the translator added detail or comment at his pleasure to the text before 
‘him. These additions by Barclay swell his poem to over 14,000 lines,—four times 
‘the size of Locher. 
The conception of the work is that of the exhorter in his pulpit denouncing 
‘sin and folly in a long catalogue-sermon, with the variation that the pulpit is the 
‘poop of a ship, and that the generalities of the Seven Deadly Sins are concretized 
‘into attacks on the vices and stupidities of the day,—backbiting, dancing, extrava- 
gant dressing, the disturbing of Church sanctity, etc. The ship never departs, and 
there is no description of life on board, no such scenic movement as Chaucer would 
have created. Had Chaucer used the ship-framework, we should have had de- 
velopments in the stage-management ; a man would have fallen overboard, others 
would have quarreled, boats putting off from shore would have raced and collided, 
and the characteristic follies of the passengers would have been displayed less by 
the captain than by their reproaches to one another or by their own braggadocio. 
Barclay is, however, more vivacious than Gower ; and among his didactic exhorta- 
tions his contemporaries found a gallery of portraits to recognize,—the besotted 
- student, the bushy-haired gallant, the shrewish wife, the ignorant physician, the 
greedy usurer, and many others. On these recognitions doubtless rested much of 
the appeal of the Ship of Fools to the sixteenth century; but it is noticeable that 
-although literary historians insist on the popularity of the poem, there was no re- 
-print of Barclay in England for sixty years after its first appearance. During that 
period, 1509-1570, there was indeed one reprint at least of Watson’s translation, 
in 1517; but Chaucer was printed four times, and Lydgate’s Fall of Princes three 
times. 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST XIV 


Zarncke’s ed. of the Narrenschiff, Leipzig, 1854, has, in its appendix ii, extracts from 
the French transls. by Riviére and by Drouyn, from Barclay (the Cawood 
print), and from Henry Watson. There are also, pp. 210-17, extracts from 
Locher’s Latin, and, pp. 217-20, from that of Badius. 

Jamieson, Edinburgh, 1874, edited The Ship of Fools translated by Alexander Bar- 
clay, 2 vols. The prefatory note states that the text, even to the punctuation, 
is exactly as in the 1509 edition. The woodcuts are facsimiles from those in the 
Basel ed. of the Latin, 1497. Locher’s Latin is not reprinted. 

Herford, Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century, Cam- 
bridge, 1886. See chap. vi. 

Fraustadt, Ueber das Verhaltnis von Barclay’s “Ship of Fooles” zur lateinischen, fran- 
zosischen, und deutschen Quelle, Breslau diss., 1894. 


300 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


Dalheimer, Die Sprache Alexander Barclays in “The Shyp of Folys”, Ziirich diss., 


1897. 


Pompen, Fr. A., The English Versions of The Ship of Fools, London, 1925. 
Extracts are in Fliigel’s Neuengl. Lesebuch i: 104-110. 
For discussion of Barclay see refs. p. 298 ante. 


THE SHYP OF FOLES OF THE WORLDE 
[Pynson, 1509] 


| Here begynneth the prologe. 

Amonge the people of euery regyon 

And ouer the worlde / south north eest 
and west 

Soundeth godly doctryne in plenty and 
foyson 

Wherin the grounde of vertue & wys- 
dome doth rest 

Rede gode and bad / and kepe the to the 
best 5 

Was neuer more plenty of holsome doc- 
tryne 

‘Nor fewer people that doth thereto en- 
clyne 


2 


We haue the Bybyll whiche godly doth 
expresse 

Of the olde testament the lawes mysticall 

And also of the newe our erour to re- 
dresse 10 

Of phylosophy and other artes liberall 

With other bokes of vertues morall 

But thoughe suche bokes vs godly wayes 


shewe 
‘We all ar blynde no man wyll them ensue 
3 
Banysshed is doctryne / we wander in 
derknes 15 


Throughe all the worlde : our selfe we 
wyll not knowe 

Wysdome is exyled / alas blynde fol- 
ysshenes 

Mysgydeth the myndes of people hye and 
lowe 

‘Grace is decayed / yll gouernaunce doth 
growe 

Both prudent Pallas and Minerua are 
slayne 20 


Or els to heuyn retourned are they agayne 


The Pynson print of 1509 is described by Jamie- 
son in his ed. of the Ship of Fools i:xcviii; see 
ibid. for the various Latin and English prefa- 
tory bits preceding this Prologue, which is on 
fol. ix ff. of the 1509 volume. 


4 

Knowledge of trouth / Prudence / and 
iust Symplicite 

Hath vs clene left: For we set of them 
no store. 

Our Fayth is defyled loue / goodnes / 
and Pyte: 

Honest maners nowe ar reputed of: no 
more. 25 


‘Lawyers ar lordes: but Justice is rent 


and tore. 
Or closed lyke a Monster within dores 
thre. 
For without mede : or money no man can 
hyr se. 
5 


Al is disordred: vertue hathe no rewarde. 

Alas / Compassion: and Mercy bothe ar 
slayne. 30 

Alas / the stony hartys of pepyl ar so 
harde 

That nought can constrayne theyr folyes 
to refrayne 

But styl they procede: and eche other 
meyntayne. 

So wander these foles: incresinge with- 
out nomber. 

That al the worlde they vtterly encomber. 


6 
-Blasphemers of Chryst: Hostlers: and 


Tauerners: 

-Crakars and bosters with Courters auen- 
terous / 

Bawdes and Pollers with comon extor- 
cioners 


Ar taken nowe adayes in the worlde 
moste glorious. 

But the gyftes of grace and al wayes 
gracious 40 

We haue excluded. Thus lyue we carnal- 


ly: 
Utterly subdued to al lewdnes and Foly. 


Thus is of Foles a sorte almost innumer- 
able. 


THE SHIP OF FOOLS 301 


Defilynge the worlde with syn and Vyl- 


any. 

Some thynkynge them self moche wyse 
& commendable 45 

Thoughe al theyr dayes they lyue vn- 
thryftely. 


No goodnes they perceyue nor to no 
goode aplye. 

-But if he haue a great wombe / & and 
his Cofers ful 

-Than is none holde wyser bytwene Lon- 
don and Hul. ; 


‘But to assemble these Foles in one 
bonde 50 

-And theyr demerites worthely to note. 

-Fayne shal I shyppes of euery maner 
londe. 

None shalbe left: Barke / Galay / Shyp 
/ nor Bote. 

‘One vessel can nat brynge them al aflote. 

For yf al these Foles were brought into 
one Barge Eo 

The bote shulde synke so sore shulde be 
the charge. 


The sayles are hawsed / a plesant cole 
dothe blowe. 

“The Foles assembleth as fast as they may 
dryue. 

Some swymmeth after: other as thycke 
doth rowe 

In theyr small botes / as Bees about a 
hyue 60 

The nomber is great / and eche one 
doth stryue 

For to be chefe as Purser and Capytayne 

Quarter mayster / Lodesman or els Bote- 
swayne. 

10 


-They ron to our shyp / eche one doth 
greatly fere 

Lyst his slacke paas / sholde cause hym 
byde behynde 65 

The wynde ryseth / and is lyke the sayle 
to tere 

Eche one enforseth the anker vp to wynde 

The se swellyth by planettes well I fynde 

These obscure clowdes threteneth vs 


tempest 
All are nat in bed whiche shall haue yll 
rest 70 


11 
We are full lade and yet forsoth I 
thynke 


A thousand are behynde / whom we may 
not receyue 

For if we do / our nauy clene shall synke 

He oft all lesys that coueytes all to haue 

From London Rockes almyghty god vs 
saue 75 

For if we there anker / outher bote or 
barge 

There be so many that they vs wyll ouer- 
charge 


12 

Ye London Galantes / arere / ye shall 
nat enter 

We kepe the streme / and touche nat 
the shore 

In Cyte nor in Court we dare nat well 
auenter 80 

Lyst perchaunce we sholde displeasure 
haue therfore 

But if ye wyll nedes some shall haue an 
ore 

And all the remenaunt shall stande afar 
at large 


»And rede theyr fautes paynted aboute our 


barge 
13 


- Lyke as a myrrour doth represent agayne 
- The fourme and fygure of mannes coun- 


tenaunce 86 


-So in our shyp shall he se wrytyn playne 
~The fourme and fygure of his mysgouern- 


aunce 

What man is fautles / but outher igno- 
raunce 

Or els wylfulnes causeth hym offende: 90 


-Than let hym nat disdayne this shyp / 


tyll he amende 


14 
And certaynly I thynke that no creature 
Lyuynge in this lyfe mortall (and) tran- 
sytory 
Can hym selfe kepe and stedfastly endure 
Without all spot / as worthy eternall 
glory 95 
But if he call to his mynde and memory 


-Fully the dedys both of his youthe and 


age 


- He wyll graunt in this shyp to kepe some 


stage 
15 
But who so euer wyll knowlege his owne 
foly 
And it repent / lyuynge after in sympyl- 
nesse 100 


302 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


-Shall haue no place nor rowme more in 
our nauy 

But become felawe to pallas the goddesse 

But he that fyxed is in suche a blynd- 


nesse 

‘That thoughe he be nought he thynketh 
al is well 

~Suche shall in this Barge bere a babyll 
and a bell 105 


16 

These with other lyke may eche man se 
and rede 

Eche by themselfe in this small boke 
ouerall 

The fautes shall he fynde if he take good 
hede 

Of all estatis as degres temporall 

With gyders of dignytees spirituall 170 

Both pore and riche / Chorles and Cyte- 
zyns 

-For hast to lepe a borde many bruse 
theyr shynnys 


17 

-Here is berdles youth / and here is 
crokyd age 

Children with theyr faders that yll do 
them insygne 

And doth nat intende theyr wantones to 
swage II5 

Nouther by worde nor yet by discyplyne 

-Here be men of euery science and doc- 
tryne 

Lerned and vnlerned man mayde chylde 
and wyfe 

-May here se and rede the lewdenes of 
theyr lyfe 

18 

Here ar vyle wymen: whom loue Immod- 
erate I20 

-And lust Uenereall bryngeth to hurt and 
shame 

‘Here ar prodigal Galantes: wyth mouers 
of debate. 

And thousandes mo: whome I nat wel 
dare name. 

‘Here ar Bacbyters whiche goode lyuers 
dyffame. 

Brakers of wedlocke / men proude: and 


couetous : 125 
Pollers / and pykers with folke deli- 
cious. 
19 


It is but foly to rehers the names here 
Of al suche Foles: as in one Shelde or 
targe. 


Syns that theyr ‘foly dystynctly shal 
apere 

On euery lefe: in Pyctures fayre and 
large. 130 


‘To Barclays stody: and Pynsones cost 


and charge 


~Wherfore ye redars pray that they both 


may be saued 


‘Before God / syns they your folyes 


haue thus graued. 
20 
But to thentent that euery man may 
knowe 


-The cause of my wrytynge: certes I in- 


tende 135 


-To profyte and to please both hye and 


lowe 


~ And blame theyr fautes wherby they may 


amende 
But if that any his quarell wyll defende 
Excusynge his fautes to my derysyon 


‘Knowe he that noble poetes thus haue 


done 140 
ZA 


‘Afore my dayes a thousande yere ago 
~Blamynge and reuylynge the inconuen- 


yence 
Of people / wyllynge them to withdrawe 
therfro 


’Them I ensue: nat lyke of intellygence 


And though I am nat to them lyke in 
science 145 


‘Yet this is my wyll mynde and intencion 
‘To blame all vyce lykewyse as they haue 


done / ; 
22 
To tender youth my mynde is to auayle 
That they eschewe may all lewdenes 
and offence 
Whiche doth theyr myndes often sore as- 
sayle 150 
Closynge the iyen of theyr intellygence 


~But if I halt in meter or erre in elo- 


quence 


- Or be to large in langage I pray you 


blame nat me 
For my mater is so bad it wyll none other 
be 


{Here begynneth the foles and first in- 
profytable bokes. 


[Woodcut of a spectacled figure in cap and 
bells at a desk piled with books.] 


23 
‘I am.the firste fole of all the hole nauy 


To kepe the pompe / the helme and eke 
the sayle 156 


THE SHIP OF FOOLS 303 


For this is my mynde / this one pleas- 
oure haue I 
Of bokes to haue grete plenty and apar- 


ayle 

-I take no wysdome by them: nor yet 
auayle 

Nor them perceyue nat: And then I 
them despyse 160 


Thus am I a foole and all that sewe that 

guyse 
24 

‘That in this shyp the chefe place I 
gouerne 

By this wyde see with folys wanderynge 

The cause is playne / and easy to dys- 
cerne 

-Styll am I besy bokes assemblynge 165 

’For to haue plenty it is a plesaunt thynge 

-In my conceyt and to haue them ay in 
honde 

~But what they mene do I nat vnderstonde 


25 

~But yet I haue them in great reuerence 

And honoure sauynge them from fylth 
and ordure 170 

-By often brusshynge / and moche dyly- 
gence 

Full goodly bounde in pleasaunt couer- 
ture 

Of domas / satyn / or els of veluet pure 

I kepe them sure ferynge lyst they sholde 
be lost 

For. in them is the connynge wherin I 
me bost 175 


26 
But if it fortune that any lernyd men 
Within my house fall to disputacion 
I drawe the curtyns to shewe my bokes 
then 
That they of my cunnynge sholde make 
probacion 
I kepe nat to fall in altercacion 180 
And whyle they comon my bokes I turne 
and wynde 
‘For all is in them / and no thynge in my 
mynde. 
27 
-Tholomeus the riche causyd longe agone 
Ouer all the worlde good bokes to be 
sought 
Done was his commaundement anone 185 
These bokes he had and in his stody 
brought 


Whiche passyd all erthly treasoure as he 
thought 


‘But neuertheles he dyd hym nat aply 


Unto theyr doctryne / but lyued unhap- 

pely 
28 

Lo in lyke wyse of bokys I haue store 190 

But fewe I rede / and fewer under- 
stande 

I folowe nat theyr doctryne nor theyr 
lore 

It is ynoughe to bere a boke in hande 

It were to moche to be (in) suche a 
bande 

For to be bounde to loke within the 
boke 195 


-I am content on the fayre couerynge to 


loke 
29 
Why sholde I stody to hurt my wyt 
therby 
Or trouble my mynde with stody ex- 
cessyue 
Sythe many ar whiche stody right besely 
And yet therby shall they neuer thryue 
The fruyt of wysdom can they nat con- 
tryue 201 
And many to stody so moche are in- 
clynde 
That vtterly they fall out of theyr mynde 


30 


-Eche is nat lettred that nowe is made a 


lorde 
-Nor eche a clerke that hath a _ bene- 
fyce 205 
They are nat all lawyers that plees doth 
recorde 


‘All that are promotyd are nat fully wyse 
“On suche chaunce nowe fortune throwys 


hir dyce 
That thoughe one knowe but the yresshe 
game 
Yet wolde he haue a gentyll mannys 
name 210 
31 
So in lyke wyse I am in suche case 
Thoughe I nought can I wolde be callyd 
wyse 
Also I may set another in my place 
Whiche may for me my bokes excercyse 
Or else I shall ensue the comon gyse 215 
And say concedo to euery argument 
Lyst by moche speche my latyn sholde 
be spent 


304 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


32 
I am lyke other Clerkes whiche frowardly 
them gyde 
That after they ar onys come vnto pro- 


mocion 
They gyue them to plesour theyr stody 
set asyde. 220 
Theyr Auaryce couerynge with fayned 
deuocion. 


Yet dayly they preche: and haue great 
derysyon 

Against the rude Laymen: and al for 
Couetyse. 

Though theyr owne Conscience be blynd- 
ed wt that vyce 


33 
But if I durst trouth playnely vtter and 
expresse. 225 
This is the special cause of this Incon- 
uenyence. 
That greatest foles / and fullest of 
lewdnes 
Hauynge least wyt: and symplest Science 
Ar fyrst promoted: and haue greatest 


reuerence 
For if one can flater / and bere a hawke 
on his Fyst 230 


He shalbe made Person of Honyngton 
or of Clyst. 


34 

-But he that is in Stody ay ferme and 
diligent. 

- And without al fauour prechyth Chrystys 
lore 

- Of al the Comontye nowe adayes is sore 
shent. 

.And by Estates thretened to Pryson oft 


therfore. 235 
‘Thus what auayle is it / to vs to Stody 
more: 


-To knowe outher scripture / trouth / 
wysedom / or vertue 

-Syns fewe / or none without fauour dare 
them shewe. 


35 

But O noble Doctours / that worthy ar 
of name: 

Consyder our olde faders : note wel theyr 
diligence: 240 

Ensue ye theyr steppes : obtayne ye such 
fame, 

As they dyd lyuynge : and that by true 
Prudence. 


Within theyr hartys they planted theyr 
scyence 

And nat in plesaunt bokes. But nowe 
to fewe suche be. 

Therefore in this Shyp let them come 
rowe with me. 


{The Enuoy of Alexander Barclay Trans- 
latour exortynge the Foles accloyed with 
this vice to amende theyr foly. 


36 
Say worthy doctours and Clerkes curious: 
What moueth you of Bokes to haue such 


nomber. 

Syns dyuers doctrines throughe way con- 
trarious. 

Doth mannys mynde distract and sore 
encomber. 

Alas blynde men awake / out of your 
slomber 250 


And if ye wyl nedys your bokes multy- 
plye 
With diligence endeuer you some to oc- 


cupye. 
* * * * * * 
{Of newe fassions and disgised Gar- 
mentes. 
66 

Who that newe garmentes loues or deuys- 
es. 

Or weryth by his symple wyt / and 
vanyte 


-Gyuyth by his foly and vnthryfty gyses 
-Moche yl example to yonge Comontye. 


Suche one is a Fole and skant shal euer 

thee 460 
And comonly it is sene that nowe a dayes 
One Fole gladly folowes another wayes. 


Drawe nere ye Courters and Galants dis- 
gised 


-Ye counterfayt Caytifs / that ar nat con- 


tent 


‘As god hath you made : his warke is 


despysed 


-Ye thynke you more crafty (than) God 


o(m)nipotent 
Unstable is your mynde : that shewes by 
your garment. 


.A fole is knowen by his toyes and his 


Cote. 
But by theyr clothinge nowe may we 
many note. 


THE SHIP OF FOOLS 305 


68 

-Aparayle is apayred. Al sadness is de- 
cayde 470 

‘The garmentes ar gone that longed to 
honestye. 

And in newe sortes newe Foles ar 
arayede 

Despisynge the costom of good anti- 
quyte. 


‘Mannys fourme is disfigured with euery 
degre 

‘As Knyght Squyer yeman Jentilman and 
knaue / 475 

For al in theyr goynge vngoodely them 
behaue 


69 

‘The tyme hath ben / nat longe before 
our dayes 

*Whan men with honest ray coude holde 
them self content. 

Without these disgised: and counter- 
fayted wayes. 

Wherby theyr goodes ar wasted / loste / 
and spent. 480 

‘Socrates with many mo in wysdom ex- 
cellent. 

‘Bycause they wolde nought change that 
cam of nature 

‘Let growe theyre here without cuttinge 
or scissure. 


70 

“At that time was it reputed to lawde and 
great honour. 

‘To haue longe here: the Beerde downe to 
the brest 485 

For so they vsed that were of moste 
valour. 

-Stryuynge together who myht be godly- 
est 

‘Saddest / moste clenely / discretest / 
and moste honest. 

But nowe adayes together we contende 
and stryue. 

Who may be gayest: and newest wayes 
contryue. 490 

71 

Fewe kepeth mesure / but excesse and 
great outrage 

In theyr aparayle. And so therin they 
procede 

‘That theyr goode is spent: theyr Londe 
layde to morgage. 

Or solde out right: of Thryft they take 
no hede. 


Hauinge no Peny them to socour at 
theyr nede. 495 

So whan theyr goode by suche wasteful- 
nes is loste. 

They sel agayne theyr Clothes for half 
that they coste. 


72 
A fox furred Jentelman: of the fyrst 
yere or hede. 
If he be made a Bailyf a Clerke or a 
Constable. 
And can kepe a Parke or Court and 


rede a Dede 500 

Than is Ueluet to his state mete and 
agreable. 

Howbeit he were more mete to bere a 
Babyl. 

For his Foles Hode his iyen so sore doth 
blynde 


That Pryde expelleth his lynage from 
his mynde. 
73 


Yet fynde I another sorte almoste as bad 
as thay 505 

‘As yonge Jentylmen descended of worthy 
Auncetry. 

Whiche go ful wantonly in dissolute 
aray. 

Counterfayt / disgised / and moche vn- 
manerly 

Blasinge and garded: to lowe or else to 


hye. 


-And wyde without mesure: theyr stuffe 


to wast thus gothe 510 


‘But other some they suffer to dye for 


lacke of clothe 


74 
Some theyr neckes charged with colers / 
and chaynes 
As golden withthes: theyr fyngers ful of 
rynges: 


-Theyr neckes naked: almoste vnto the 


raynes 


‘Theyr sleues blasinge lyke to a Cranys 


wynges 515 
Thus by this deuysinge suche counter- 
fayted thinges 
They dysfourme that figure that god hym- 
selfe hath made 
On pryde and abusion thus ar theyr 
myndes layde 
75 


Than the Courters careles that on theyr 
mayster wayte 


306 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


Seinge hym his Vesture in suche fourme 
abuse 520 

Assayeth suche Fassion for them to 
counter fayte. 

And so to sue Pryde contynually they 
muse. 

- Than stele they: or Rubbe they. Forsoth 
they can nat chuse. 

-For without Londe or Labour harde it is 
to mentayne. 

‘But to thynke on the Galows that is a 
careful payne. 525 

76 


But be it payne or nat: there many suche 
ende. 

‘At Newgate theyr garmentis ar offred 

to be solde. 

- Theyr bodyes to the Jebet solemly as- 
cende. 

. Wauynge with the wether whyle theyr 
necke wyl holde. 

But if I shulde wryte al the ylles many- 


folde, 530 
That procedeth of this counterfayt abu- 
sion 


And mysshapen Fassions: I neuer shulde 
haue done. 
77 


For both States / comons / man / wom- 
an / and chylde 
Ar vtterly incly(n)ed to this inconuen- 


yence. 
But namely therwith these Courters are 
defyled. 535 


-Bytwen mayster and man I fynde no 
dyfference. 

Therfore ye Courters knowledge your 
offence. 

Do nat your errour mentayne / support 
nor excuse. 

For Fowles ye ar your Rayment thus to 
abuse. 

78 

*To Shyp Galauntes come nere I say 
agayne. 540 

Wyth your set Busshes Curlynge as men 
of Inde. 

Ye counterfayted Courters come with 
your fleinge brayne 

Expresed by these variable Garmentes 
that ye fynde. 

‘To tempt chast Damsels and turne them 
to your mynde 

-Your breste ye discouer and necke. Thus 


your abusion 545 
‘Is the Fendes bate. And your soules con- 
fusion. 


79 
Come nere disgysed foles: receyue your 
Foles Hode. 
And ye that in sondry colours ar arayde. 
Ye garded galantes wastinge thus your 


goode 
Come nere with your Shertes brodered 
and displayed. 550 


In fourme of Surplys. Forsoth it may be 
sayde. 

That of your Sort right fewe shal thryue 
this yere. 

Or that your faders werith suche Habyte 
in the Quere. 


80 
And ye Jentyl wymen whome this lewde 
vice doth blynde 
Lased on the backe: your peakes set a 
loft. 555 
Come to my Shyp. forget ye nat behynde. 
Your Sadel on the tayle: yf ye lyst to sit 
soft. 


‘Do on your Decke Slut: if ye purpos 


to come oft. 

I mean your Copyntanke: And if it wyl 
do no goode. 

To kepe you from the rayne ye shall haue 
a foles hode. 560 


81 


-By the ale stake knowe we the ale hous 


And euery Jnne is knowen by the sygne 
‘So a lewde woman and a lecherous 


-Is knowen by hir clothes / be they cours 


or fyne 


-Folowyng newe fassyons / not graunted 


by doctryne 505 


*The bocher sheweth his flesshe it to sell 
‘So doth these women dampnyng theyr 


soule to hell 
82 
What shall I more wryte of our enormyte 
Both man and woman as I before haue 


sayde 

Ar rayde and clothyd nat after theyr 
degre 570 

As nat content with the shape that god 
hath made 

The clenlynes of Clergye is nere also 
decayed. 

Our olde apparale (alas) is nowe layde 
downe 

And many prestes asshamed of theyr 
Crowne. 


573. The bracketed word (alas) is so bracketed 
in the text. Similarly in lines 8460, 13809, 
13878. 


THE SHIP OF FOOLS 307 


83 

Unto laymen we vs refourme agayne 575 

As of chryste our mayster in maner halfe 
asshamed 

My hert doth wepe: my tunge doth sore 
complayne 

Seing howe our State is worthy to be 
blamed. 

But if all the Foly of our Hole Royalme 
were named 

Of mys apparayle of Olde / young / 
lowe / and hye / 580 

The tyme shulde fein: and space to me 
denye. 


Alas thus al states of Chrysten men de- 
clynes. 

And of wymen also disfourmynge theyr 
fygure. 

Wors than the Turkes / Jewes / or 
Sarazyns. 

‘A Englonde Englonde amende or be 
thou sure 585 

-Thy noble name and fame can nat en- 
dure 

Amende lyst god do greuously chastyce. 

Bothe the begynners and folowe(r)s of 
this vyce. 


"The enuoy of Alexander barclay pe 


translatour. 
85 
Reduce courters clerly vnto your re- 
m(em)brance 
From whens this disgysyng was brought 
wherein ye go 590 
-As I remember it was brought out of 


France. 

This is to your plesour. But payne ye had 
also, 

‘As French Pockes hote ylles with other 
paynes mo. 

Take ye in good worth the swetnes with 
the Sour. 

For often plesour endeth with sorowe 
and dolour. 595 


But ye proude Galaundes that thus your- 
selfe disgise 

Be ye asshamed. beholde vnto your 
Prynce. 

Consyder his sadnes: His honestye de- 
uyse 

His clothynge expresseth his inwarde 
prudence 


Ye se no Example of suche Inconuen- 
yence 600 

In his hyghnes: but godly wyt and grauy- 
te: 

Ensue hym 
enormyte. 


and sorowe for your 


87 
Away with this pryde / this statelynes 
let be 


‘Rede of the Prophetis clothynge or ves- 


ture 


‘And of Adam firste of your ancestrye 605 


Of Johnn the Prophete / theyr cloth- 
ynge was obscure 

Uyle and homly / but nowe what crea- 
ture 

Wyll them ensue / sothly fewe by theyr 
wyll 

Therfore suche folys my nauy shall ful- 
fyll 


* * * * * * 


Of the folysshe descripion and inquisi- 
cion of dyuers contrees and regyons 


‘Who that is besy to mesure and com- 


pace 


6930 
‘The heuyn and erth and all the worlde 


large 


~Describynge the clymatis and folke of 


euery place 


-He is a fole and hath a greuous charge 


Without auauntage / wherfore let hym 
discharge 

Hym selfe / of that fole whiche in his 
necke doth syt 6935 

About suche folyes dullynge his mynde 
and wyt. 


That fole / of wysdome and reason doth 
fayle 

And also discression labowrynge for 
nought. 

And in this shyp shall helpe to drawe the 
sayle 

Which day and nyght infixeth all his 


thought 6940 
To haue the hole worlde within his body 
brought 


Mesurynge the costes of euery royalme 
and lande 

And clymatis / with his compace / in 
his hande 


He coueytyth to knowe / and compryse 
in his mynde 


308 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


Euery regyon and euery sundry place 
Whiche ar not knowen to any of man- 


kynde 6946 
And neuer shall be without a specyall 
grace 


Yet suche folys take pleasour and solace 
The length and brede of the worlde to 


mesure 
-In vay(n)e besynes / takynge great 
charge and cure 6950 


They set great stody labour and besynes 

To knowe the people that in the east 
abyde 

-And by and by theyr measures after 
dres 

To knowe what folke the west and north 


part gyde 
And who the sowth / thus all the worlde 
wyde 6955 


- By thes folys is meated by ieometry 
, Yet knowe they scant theyr owne vnwyse 
body 


Another labours to knowe the nacions 
wylde 

Inhabytynge the worlde in the North 
plage and syde 

Metynge by mesure / countrees both 
fyers and mylde 6960 

Under euery planete / where men sayle 
go or ryde 

And so this fole castyth his wyt so wyde 

To knowe eche londe vnder the fyrma- 
ment 

That therabout in vayne his tyme is 
spent 


Than wyth his compace drawyth he 
about 6965 

- Europe / and Asye / to knowe howe 
they stande 

And of theyr regyons nat to be in dout 

Another with Grece and Cesyll is in 
honde 

With Apuly / Afryke and the newe 
fonde londe 

With Numydy and / where the Moryans 
do dwell 6970 

And other londes whose namys none can 
tell 


He mesureth Athlant / calpe / and cap- 
padoce 
The see of Hercules garnado and Spayne 


The yles there aboute shewynge all in 
groce 

Throwynge his mesure to Fraunce and 
to Brytayne 

The more and lesse / to Flaundres and 
almayne 


‘There is no yle so lytell that hath name 


But that these Folys in hande ar with the 
same 


And regyons that ar compasyd with the 
se 

They besely labour to knowe and vnder- 
stande 6980 

And by what cause / nature or prop- 


ertye 
The se doth flowe / nat ouercouerynge 
the londe 
So he descrybyth his cercle in his honde 
The hole worlde: leuynge no thynge be- 


hynde 
As in the Doctrynes of Strabo he doth 
fynde 6985 


Whiche wrote in bokes makynge declara- 
cion ‘ 

Somtyme hym groundynge vpon auctoryte 

Howe eche Royalme and londe had sytua- 
cion 

Some in brode feldes some closyd with 
the see 

But ye geometryans that of this purpose 


be 6990 
Ye ar but folys to take suche cure and 
payne 
Aboute a thynge whiche is fruteles and 
vayne 


It passyth your reason the hole worlde 
to discus 

And knowe euery londe and countrey of 
the grounde 


‘For though that the noble a(u)ctour 


plinius 6995 
The same purposyd / yet fawty is he 
founde 


And in Tholomeus great errours doth ha- 
bounde 

Thoughe he by auctoryte makyth men- 
cyon 

Of the descripcion of euery regyon 


-Syns these a(u)ctours so excellent of 


name 7000 


-Hath bokes composyd of this facultye 


THE SHIP’ OF FOOLS 309 


‘And neuer coude parfytely perfourme 
the same 

-Forsoth it is great foly vnto the 

‘To labour about suche folysshe vanyte 

-It is a furour also one to take payne 7005 

-In suche thynges as prouyd ar vncer- 
tayne 


‘For nowe of late hath large londe and 


grounde 

-Ben founde by maryners and crafty 
gouernours 

*The whiche londes were neuer knowen 
nor founde 


-Byfore our tyme by our predecessours 

And here after shall by our successours 

Parchaunce mo be founde / wherin men 
dwell 7012 

Of whome we neuer before this same 
harde tell 


’Ferdynandus that late was kynge of 


spayne 

_Of londe and people hath founde plenty 
and store 7015 

Of whome the bydynge to vs was vncer- 
tayne 

No christen man of them harde tell be- 
fore 


‘Thus is it foly to tende vnto the lore 

-And vnsure science of vayne geometry 

~Syns none can knowe all the worlde per- 
fytely 7020 


4 Thenuoy of Barklay. 

Ye people that labour the worlde to 
mesure 

Therby to knowe the regyons of the same 

*Knowe firste your self / that knowledge 
is moste sure 

For certaynly it is rebuke and shame 

For man to labour. onely for a name 7025 

To knowe the compasse of all the worlde 
wyde 

Nat knowynge hym selfe / nor howe he 
sholde hym gyde 

* * * * * * 
-Of the arrogance & pryde of rude men 
of the countrey. 
The rustycall pryde of carles of the 


londe 8437 
Remaynyth nowe / whiche I intende to 
note 
Whiche theyr owne pryde nat se nor 
vnderstonde 


-Wherfore they coueyte with me to haue a 


bote 8440 

And so they shall / but whan they ar a 
flote 

Let them me pardon / for I wyll take no 
charge 

Of them: but them touche and let them 
ren at large 


-Of husbonde men the lyfe and the nature 
-Was wont be rude and of symplycyte 8445 
‘And of condicion humble and demure 


But if a man wolde nowe demande of me 

Howe longe agone is syns they thus haue 
be 

I myght well answere it is nat longe 


agone 
Syns they were symple and innocent 
echone 8450 


And so moche were they gyuen to 
symplenes 

And other vertues chefe and pryncipall 

That the godly trone of fayth and 
righ (t) wysnes 

Had left great townes lordes and men 
royall 

And taken place amonge these men rur- 
all 8455 

All vertues: stedfastnes iustyce and lawe 


-Disdayned nat these pore cotis thekt with 


strawe 


-There was no disceyt nor gyle of tymes 


longe 

Amonge these men: they were out chasyd 
and gone 

For iustyce (as I haue sayd) was then 
amonge 8460 

And of long tyme there kept hir chayre 
and trone 

Of brynnynge Auaryce amonge these met 
was none 


‘No wrongfull lucre nor disceytful auaun- 


tage 
Infect the myndes of men of the vyllage 


‘That is to say they knewe none vsury 


No hunger of golde dyd theyr myndes 


confounde 8466 
They knewe no malyce: nor pryde of 
theyr body 
Nor other vyces that trowbleth nowe the 
grounde 


They coueyted nat to greatly to abounde 


310 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


In proude aparayle / lyke Cytezeyns 


excellent 8470 
But theyr hole lyfe was symple and in- 
nocent 


But nowe the lyfe of eche carle and 
vyllayne 

Is in all maners chaungyd euen as clene 

As if the trone moste noble and souer- 


ayne 
Of rightwysenes : amonge them had neuer 
bene 8475 


Of theyr olde vertues nowe is none in 
them sene 

Wherby they longe were wont themself 
to gyde 

‘Theyr lyfe is loste and they set hole on 
pryde 


-Theyr clothes stately after the courters 


gyse 
‘Theyr here out busshynge as a foxis 
tayle 8480 
And all the fassions whiche they can 
deuyse 


In counterfaytynge they vse in aparayll 
Party and gardyd or short to none auayle 
~So that if god sholde theyr bodyes 


chaunge 
' After theyr vesture theyr shape sholde 
be full strange 8485 


Thus is theyr mekenes and olde symply- 
cyte 

Tournyd by theyr foly to arrogance and 
pryde 

Theyr rightwysenes / loue and fydelyte 

By enuy and falshode nowe ar set asyde 

- Disceyt and gyle with them so sure doth 

yde 8490 

-That folke of the towne of them oft 
lerne the same 

And other newe yllis causynge reprofe 
and shame 


Theyr scarsnes nowe is tournyd to couet- 
yse 

They onely haue golde and that / in abun- 
daunce 

Theyr vertue is gone / and they rotyd in 
vyce 8495 

Onely on riches fixed is theyr pleasaunce 

Fye Chorles amende this mad mysgouern- 
aunce 


What mouyth you vnto this thyrst fer- 
uent 

Of golde: that were wont to be so inno- 
cent 


What causeth you thus your lyfe to 
change 8500 
To cursyd malyce from godly innocence 


‘Nowe Carles ar nat content with one 


grange 


-Nore one ferme place / suche is theyr 


insolence 


-They must haue many / to support theyr 


expence 


-And so a riche / vyllayne proude and 


arrogant 8505 


-Anone becomyth a couetous marchant 


-Than labours he for to be made a state 
’ And to haue the pryuelege of hye nobles 


Thus churlys becomyth statis nowe of 
late 

Hye of renowne without all sympyl- 
nes 8510 

But it is great foly and also shame doutles 

For Carles to coueyt this wyse to clym 
so hye 

And nat be pleasyd with theyr state and 
degre 


T(h)enuoy of Barclay the Translatour 


“Fye rurall carles awake I say and ryse 
“Out of your vyce and lyfe abhomynable 


Namely of pryde / wrath / enuy and 
couetyse 8516 

Whiche ye insue / as they were nat 
damnable 

Recouer your olde mekenes / whiche is 
most profytable 


| Of all vertues / and be content with your 


degre 
For make a carle a lorde / and without 
any fable 8520 


In his inwarde maners one man styll 
shall he be. 


% * * * * * 


Here purpose I no farther to procede 

Let euery man chose for hym selfe a 
place 13796 

As he shall in this boke ouer se or rede 

For hym moste mete: man knoweth best 
his case 

And here shall I by goddes helpe and 
grace 


THE SHIP OF FOOLS 311 


‘Drawe all my Nauy / to hauyns for to 
rest 13800 
‘For fere of wynter stormes and tempest 


Wysdom hath gyuen me this commaunde- 
ment 

-My wyt is wery: my hande and hede also 

-Wherfore I gladly with all my herte as- 
sent 

-And lepe a borde / amonge the other 
mo 13805 

‘But in my iournay: if that I haue mysgo 

‘By bytynge wordes or scarsnes of scyence 

I yelde me vnto men of more prudence 


It is no meruayle (the trouth playnly to 
say) 

Syth I a mayster without experyence 

Of worldly thynges haue erred from the 


way I38IT 
By ignoraunce / or slouthfull negly- 
gence 


Let none be wroth for blamynge his of- 
fence 

-For if his lyfe fro synne be pure and 
clere 

-No maner hurt is sayde agaynst hym 

here 13815 


*Within a myrrour / if thou beholde thy 
chere 

-Or shap of face: if thy colour be pure 

Within the myrrour to the it shall apere 

-But if that thou be foule of thy fygure 

-The glas shall shewe the same I the in- 
sure 13820 

-Yet blame thou nat the myrrour for the 
same 

-But thy owne shap thou ought rebuke 
and blame 


‘The myrrour showys eche man lyke as 
they be 
‘So doth my boke / for who that is in 


syn 
Shall of his lyfe / the fygure in it 
se 13825 
If he with good aduertence loke therin 
But certaynly his reason is but thyn 
For his yll lyfe if he my boke despyse 
For them I laude that vertue exercyse 


Let nat the redar be discontent with this 
'Nor any blame agayne me to obiect 


Thoughe that some wordes be in my boke 
amys 

For though that I my selfe dyd it cor- 
rect 

‘Yet with some fautis I knowe it is infect 


‘Part by my owne ouersyght and negly- 


gence 13835 
‘And part by the prynters nat perfyte in 
science 


And other some escaped ar and past 
For that the Prynters in theyr besynes 


-Do all theyr werkes hedelynge / and in 


hast 
Wherfore if that the redar be wytles 
He shall it scorne anone by froward- 
nes 13841 
But if the reder wyse / sad and discrete 


e 
He shall it mende: laynge no faut to me 


It is ynoughe if my labour may be sene 
Of lernyd men / and theyr mynde to 
content 13845 


-For nought is pleasaunt before a Folys 


iyen 
-And to be playne it was nat myne intent 
At my begynnynge to Folys to assent 
Ne pleas theyr myndes by sparynge of 


theyr vyce 
.But it to shewe: and that in playnest 
wyse 13850 


Therfore let Folys haue theyr wordes 
vayne 

Whiche nought can do / but without 
reason chat 

All others dedes / by lewde tunge to dis- 
tayne 

Pe if theyr belyes be full / and chekis 
at 

Let Clerkes speke / and they haue scorne 
therat 13855 

They knowe no thinge: yet wolde / they 
fayne haue prayse 

And theyr owne dedes onely doth them 
please 


With suche Folys I ende my besynes 

Whiche all thynge blame / and vtterly 
dispyse 

Yet all theyr lyfe they passe in ydyl- 
nes 13860 

Or in theyr bely fedynge in bestely wyse 


312 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


But this I fynde / that no man can 
deuyse 


Jerome with other Doctours certaynly 
Cowde nat theyr warkes defende well 


A thynge so crafty / so good and excel- from enuy 13871 
lent 

Or yet so sure: that may eche man con- Holde me excusyd: for why my wyll is 
content gode 


Men to induce vnto vertue and goodnes 


“What warke is that: that may eche man I wryte no lest ne tale of Robyn hode 


content 13865 Nor sawe no sparcles ne sede of vycious- 
-No worldly thynge: forsoth I trowe the nes 13875 
same ~Wyse men loue vertue / wylde people 
’ Thoughe Virgyll were a poet excellent wantones 
- Afore all other / shynynge in lawde and ‘It longeth nat to my scyence nor cun- 
fame nynge 
- Yet some there were whiche dyd his ‘For Phylyp the Sparowe the (Dirige) 
warkes blame to synge. 


BARCLAY’S ECLOGUES: THE PROLOGUE AND ECLOGUERW 


There are five of Barclay’s eclogues, of which the first three were amplified 
from the Miseriae Curialium of Pope Pius II (Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini), who 
died in 1454. The fourth and fifth are similarly expanded from the fifth and 
sixth eclogues of Baptista Mantuanus, 1448-1516. Barclay’s prologue to the group 
is also based upon Mantuanus, and utilizes Mantuan’s statements about the partial 
execution of his work in youth in such a way that we are in doubt whether Barclay 
asserts this of himself or not. Berdan remarks that the last two eclogues must 
have been done at much the same time as the first three, since the prologue to all 
is based on Mantuan. 

The work of Mantuan, a Christian monk and General of the Carmelite Order 
during the last three years of his life, is abundant and varied. His ten eclogues, 
imitated from Virgil, were first printed on the Continent in 1498, and frequently 
until the first English edition of 1519. For two hundred years after their appear- 
ance they were a school-text in England ; Colet, drawing up his statutes for the new 
St. Paul’s School, included Mantuan in a list of Latin authors otherwise solidly 
Christian in substance; and two generations later the boy Shakespeare must have 
learned some of his “small Latin’ from Mantuan, whom he quotes in act IV, 
scene 2, of Love’s Labour’s Lost. And although Spenser took an earlier and 
greater Mantuan for his model, there are more than a few traces of the Carmelite 
monk in the Shepherd’s Calendar. 

The fourth eclogue of Barclay, here reprinted from the text of 1548, is based 
on the fifth eclogue of Mantuan; but while the Latin is of 190 hexameter verses, 
the English runs to 1158 pentameter lines. Part of this difference is due to the 
two inserted recitations by the poor shepherd-poet, amounting with their connec- 
tive to about 380 lines; and the introductory setting of Barclay adds another 36 
lines. But the difference between the remaining 740 verses of Barclay and the 
190 of Mantuan is one of method rather than of additions ; it is caused by Barclay’s 
discursiveness. Every speech is lengthened and every motive repeated; and al- 
though a good deal of interesting descriptive detail is also added, the most of 
the increase in bulk is due, as in the Ship of Fools, to moralizing comment or 
exhortation. 


THE PROLOGUE AND» ECLOGUE IV 313 


In spite of this long-winded treatment, Barclay’s management of his material 
in this eclogue has interest. He uses the Latin for his main structure, the at- 
tempt of a poor poet-shepherd to obtain the patronage of a richer but illiterate and 
niggardly neighbor. Into this frame Barclay works a double attempt at pleasing 
the imaginary patron, something on the Chaucerian pattern of a first essay inter- 
rupted and a second carried through ; the second inserted poem is an elegy modelled 
on a French original, mourning with Barclay’s actual patron the duke of Norfolk 
on the death of his son. Barclay then returns to Mantuan, and closes as does the 
Latin, with the listener’s refusal to pay for his entertainment. 

This second inserted poem, an elegy on Admiral Lord Howard, who was 
killed in a naval engagement in 1513, is said by Professor Mustard (ModLang- 
Notes 24:8-10) to owe something to Le Temple d’Honneur et de Vertus, a poem 
written in 1503 by Jean Lemaire de Belges to bewail the death of the duke of 
Bourbon. This suggestion, accepted by Lee in his French Renaissance in England, 
is rejected by Berdan, Romanic Review 2 :422. It does not indeed appear that the 
English poem owes the French much more than the title. The French has a 
high mountain crowned by a noble temple of Honor, to which press the valiant 
and worthy ; but this is frequent in medieval allegory, and appears quite as plainly 
in another poem by Lemaire de Belges, his Concorde des deux Langages, of 1511, 
with the addition also of a detail present in Barclay and not in the French Temple 
d’Honneur, the extreme difficulty of ascending the mountain. Barclay’s fierce 
guardian of the entrance, by him named Labor, is not in Lemaire de Belges’ Tem- 
ple-poem ; but in the Concorde-poem, where the temples of Venus and of Minerva 
are described, there is a loud-voiced porter of the Venus-temple, named Danger, 
who brandishes a staff and demands fees of the suppliants. This porter, a comic 
figure, hurls the poet’s proffered manuscript behind the altar in contempt. 

In Gringoire’s Chasteau de Labeur, translated earlier by Barclay, the narrator 
enters on “the waye of grete payne called dylygence”, accompanied by Lust to Do 
Good, Good Will, and Good Heart. They come to a fair castle, resplendent and 
joyous; the traveler would enter, but the porter Besynesse resists, saying that no 
one enters except by meekness. The porter’s wife Cure, however, intercedes, and 
the wayfarer is admitted. He learns that Travail and Pain are captain and mis- 
tress of the castle, and he addresses himself to the assigned task. There is no 
description of Labour’s figure such as Barclay here gives, and which has aroused 
the interest of students. 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST XV 


Kluge, Spenser’s Shepheards’ Calendar und Mantuan’s Eclogen, in Anglia 3:266-74. 

Mustard, W. P., ed. of Mantuan’s Eclogues, Baltimore, 1911. See paper by Mustard 
in Trans. Amer. Philol. Assn., 40:151-183. 

Reissert, Die Eklogen des Alexander Barclay, Hannover, 1886. 

J. R. Schultz, Alexander Barclay and the Later Eclogue-Writers, in ModLangNotes 
35 :52-4. (Googe and Spenser show no influence of Barclay whatever; Francis 
Sabie very little. Reason,—the overshadowing fame of Mantuan.) 

Berdan, Early Tudor Poetry, N. Y., 1920. 


314 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


[THE PROLOGUE TO THE ECLOGUES]| 


The famous Poetes, with the Muses nyne, 
With wyt inspired, fresh, pregnant & 
diuyne. 

Say boldly, indite, in style substanciall : 
Some in poemes, hye and heroicall. 

Some them deliteth, in heuy Tragedies: 5 
And some, in wanton or mery Comedies. 
Some, in Satiers, agayne vices dare carpe: 
Some, in sweete songes, accordant with 


the harpe, 

And eche of these all, had laude and ex- 
cellence: 

After their reason, and style of elo- 
quence. 10 

Who, in fayre speache, coulde brefely 
comprehende: 

Most fruitful matter, men dyd him most 
commende 


And who were fruitlesse, and in speache 
superflue : 

Men by their writyng, scantly set a que. 

Therfore, wyse Poetes, to sharpe & proue 
their wyt: 15 

In homely ieastes, wrote many a mery 
fyt. 

Before they durst be, of audacitie: 

Tauenture thynges, of weyght and graui- 
tie. 

In this same maner, the famous Teocrite: 

First, in Siracuse, attempted for to 
wryte. 20 

Certayne Eglogues, or speaches Pastor- 
all: 

Inducyng Shepherdes, men, homely and 
rurall. 

Which in playne language, accordyng to 
their name: 

Had sondry talkyng, some in myrth and 
game. 

Sometyme, of thynges, more lyke to 
grauitie: 25 

And not excedyng, their small capacitie. 

Most noble Uirgill, after him, long 
whyle, 

Wrote also Egloges, after lyke maner 
style. 

His wyttes prouyng, in matters Pastorall : 

Or he durst ventre, to style Heroicall. 30 

And in lyke maner now, lately in our 
dayes: 

Hathe other Poetes, atempted the same 
wayes. 

As the most famous, Baptist Mantuan: 


The best of that sorte, synce Poetes first 
began. 

And Frances Petrarke, also in Italy, 35 

In lyke maner style, wrote playne and 
merily. 

What shall I speake, of the father aun- 
cient: 

Which in breife language, both playne 
& eloquent: 

Betwene Alathea, Seustis, stout and 
bolde: 

Hath made rehersall, of all the stories 
olde. 40 

By true histories, vs teachyng to abiect: 

Agaynst vayne fables, of olde Gentyles 
sect. 

Besyde all these, yet fynde I many mo: 

Which hath employed, their diligence 
also. 

Betwene Shepheardes, as it were but a 
fable: 

To write of matters, bothe true and prof- 
itable. 

But all their names, I purpose not to 
write, 

Which in this maner, made bookes in- 
finite. 

Now to my purpose, their workes worthy 
fame: 

Dyd my yong age, my herte greatly in- 
flame. 50 

Dull slouth to eschew, my selfe to exer- 
cise: 

In suche small matters, or I durst enter- 
prise. 

To hyer matter, lyke as these chyldren do: 

Whiche first vse to crepe, and after- 
warde to go. 

The byrde vnused, first fliyng from her 


nest: 59 
Dare not aduenture, and is not bolde 
nor prest: 


With wynges abrode, to flye as dothe the 
olde: 

For vse and custome, causeth all thynges 
be bolde. 

And lytell connyng, by crafte and exer- 
cyse: 

To perfecte science, causeth a man to 


ryse. 60 
But ear the Paynter, can sure his crafte 
attayne, 


Much frowarde facion, transformeth he 
in vayne. 


THE PROLOGUE 


But rasyng superflue, and addyng, that 
dothe want: 
Rude pictures is made, both perfect and 


pleasant. 

So, where I in youth, a certain warke 
began: 65 

And not concluded, as ofte doth many a 
man. 

Yet thought I after, to make the same 
parfyte: ’ 

But long I myssed, that which I first dyd 
wryte. 

But heare a wonder, I .xl. yere saue 
twayne, 

Procedyng in age, founde my first youth 
agayne. 70 


To fynde youth in age, is a probleme 
diffuse: 

But now heare the truthe, & then no 
longer muse. 

As I late tourned, olde bookes to and fro: 

One lytle treatyse, I founde among the 


mo. 
Bicause that in youth, I dyd compile the 
same: 73 


Egloges of youth, I called it by name. 

And seyng some men, haue in the same 
delyte : 

At their great instance, I made the same 
parfyte. 

Addyng and batyng, where I perceyued 
neade: 

All them desyring, which shall this trea- 
tyse reade. 80 

Not to be greued, with my playne sent- 
ence, 

Rudely conueyed, for lacke of eloquence. 

It were not sittyng, a hearde or man 
rurall, 

To speake in tearmes, gay and rethoricall. 

So teacheth Orace, in arte of Poetry, 85 

That writers namely, their reason should 
apply. 

Meete speache appropryng, to every per- 
sonage: 

After his estate, behauour, wyt, and age. 

But if that any woulde, now to me abiect, 

That this my labor, shalbe of small effect. 

And to the reader, not greatly proffit- 


able, OI 
And by that manner, as vayne and re- 
proueable. 


Bicause it maketh, onely relacion, 
Of Shepheardes manner, and disputacion. 


AND’ ECLOGUE IV 315 


If any suche reade, my treatyse to the 
ende, 95 

He shall well perceyue, if he therto en- 
tende. 

That it conteyneth, bothe laudes and ver- 
tue, 

And man enformeth, misliuyng to eschue. 

With diuers bourdes, and _ sentences 


morall: 
Closed in shadow, of speaches Pastor- 
all. 100 


As many Poetes, as I haue sayde beforne: 

Haue vsed long tyme, before that I was 
borne. 

But of their writyng, though I ensue the 
rate, 

No name I chalenge, of Poete Laureate. 

That name, vnto them, is meete, and dothe 
agree: T05 

Which writeth matters, with curiositee. 

Myne habite blacke, accordeth not with 


greene: 

Blacke, betokeneth death, as it is daily 
seene, 

The greene, is pleasaunt, fresh, lust and 
iolitie: 

These two, in nature, hath great diuer- 
sitie, IIo 


Then, who woulde ascribe, excepte he 
were a foole, 

The pleasaunt Lauret, vnto the mourn- 
yng coole. 

Another rewarde, abydeth my labor: 

The glorious syght, of God my Sauior. 

Which is cheife Shepherde, and head 
of other all: II5 

To him, for succour, in this my warke, 
I call. 

And not on Clio, nor olde Melpomene: 

My hope is fixed, of him ayded to be. 

That he, me direct, my mynde for to ex- 
presse: 

That he, to good ende, my wyt and pen 


addresse. 120 
For to accomplyssh, my purpose and en- 
tent: 


To the laude and pleasure, of God omni- 
potent. 

And to the profyte, the pleasure and the 
meede. 

Of al them which shal, this treatise heare 
& reede. 

But to the reader, now to retourne 
agayne: 125 


316 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


Fyrst, of this thyng, I wyll thou be cer- 
tayne. 

That . x . Egloges, this hole treatyse dothe 
holde: 

To imitate, of other Poetes olde. 

In which Egloges, Shepherdes thou mayst 


see, 
In homely language, not passyng their 
degree. 130 


Some, disputyng, of Courtly Misery: 

Sometyme, of Uenus deceatfull tiranny. 

Sometyme, commendyng loue, honest, and 
laudable 


Sometyme, dispisyng loue, false, deceau- 
able. 

Somtyme, dispisyng, and blamyng au- 
arise: 135 

Sometyme excityng, vertue to exercyse. 

Sometyme, of warre, abhoryng the out- 
rage: 

And of the same tyme, the manifolde 
damage. 

And other matters, as after shall appeare: 

To their great pleasure, whiche shal them 
reade or heare. 140 


THE FOURTH EGLOGE OF ALEXANDER BARCLAY, 
entituled Codrus and Minalcus, treating of the behauour of Riche men agaynst Poetes 


4 The Argument. 

Codrus a shepheard lusty, gay and stoute, 

Sat with his wethers at pasture round 
about, 

And poore Minalcas with ewes scarse 
fourtene 

Sat sadly musing in shadowe on the 
grene. 

This lustie Codrus was cloked for the 
rayne, 

And doble decked with huddes one o 
twayne, 

He had a pautner with purses manyfolde, 

And surely lined with siluer and with 
golde, 

Within his wallet were meates good and 


5 
r 


fine, 
Both store and plentie had he of ale and 
wine, 10 


Suche fulsome pasture made him a double 
chin, 

His furred mittins were of a curres skin, 

Nothing he wanted longing to clothe or 
foode, 

But by no meane would he depart with 


good. 
Sometime this Codrus did vnder shadowe 
lye 15 


Wide open piping and gaping on the skye, 

Sometime he daunced and hobled as a 
beare, 

Sometime he pried howe he became his 
geare, 

He lept, he songe, and ran to proue his 
might, 


When purse is heauy oftetime the heart is 


light. 20 
But though this Codrus had store inough 
of good, 


He wanted wisedome, for nought he yn- 
derstood 
Saue worldly practise his treasour for to 


store, 

Howe euer it came small forse had he 
therfore. 

On the other side the poore Minalcas 


lay, 25 

With empty belly and simple poore aray, 

Yet coulde he pipe and finger well a 
drone, 

But soure is musike when men for hun- 
ger grone, 

Codrus had riches, Minalcas had cunning, 

For God not geueth to one man euery 
thing. 30 

At last this Codrus espied Minalcas, 

And soone he knewe what maner man he 
was, 

For olde acquayntaunce betwene them 
earst had bene, 

Long time before they met vpon the 


grene, 
And therfore Codrus downe boldly by 
him sat, 35 


And in this maner began with him to 
chat. 


Codrus first speaketh 


Al hayle Minalcas, nowe by my fayth well 
met, 

Lorde Jesu mercy what troubles did thee 
let, 


THE, PROLOGUE 


That this long season none could thee 


here espy? 

With vs was thou wont to sing full 
merily, 40 

And to lye piping oftetime among the 
floures, 

What time thy beastes were feding among 
ours. 

In these olde valleys we two were wont 
to bourde, 


And in these shadowes talke many a 
mery worde, 

And oft were we wont to wrastle for a 
fall, 4 

But nowe thou droupest and hast for- 
gotten all. 

Here wast thou wont swete balades to 
sing, 

Of song and ditte as it were for a king, 

And of gay matters to sing and to endite, 

But nowe thy courage is gone and thy 
delite, 50 

Trust me Minalcas nowe playnly I espy 

That thou art wery of shepheardes com- 


pany, 

And that all pleasour thou semest to de- 
spise, 

Lothing our pasture and fieldes in like- 
wise, 

Thou fleest solace and euery mery fitte, 55 

Leasing thy time and sore hurting thy 
witte, 

In sloth thou slombrest as buried were 
thy song, 

Thy pipe is broken or som what els is 
wrong. 


Minalcas 


What time the Cuckowes fethers mout 
and fall, 
From sight she lurketh, hir song is gone 


withall, 60 
When backe is bare and purse of coyne 
is light, 
The wit is dulled and reason hath no 
might: 


Adewe enditing when gone is libertie, 

Enemie to Muses is wretched pouertie, 

What time a knight is subiect to a 
knaue 65 

To iust or tourney small pleasour shall 
he haue. 


Codrus 


What no man thee kepeth here in cap- 
tiuitie, 


AND ECLOGUE IV 317 


And busy labour subdueth pouertie, 

And oft it is better and much surer also 

As subiect to obey then at freewill to 
go, 70 

As for example beholde a wanton colte 

In raging youth leapeth ouer hill and 
holte, 

But while he skippeth at pleasure and at 
will 

Ofte time doth he fall in daunger for to 
spill, 

Sometime on stubbes his hofes sore he 
teares, 

Or fals in the mud both ouer head and 
eares, 

Sometime all the night abrode in hayle 
or rayne, 

And oft among breres tangled by the 
mayne, 

And other perils he suffreth infinite, 

So mingled with sorowe is pleasour and 
delite : 80 

But if this same colte be broken at the 
last, 

His sitter ruleth and him refrayneth fast, 

The spurre him pricketh, the bridle doth 
him holde, 

That he can not praunce at pleasour 
where he wolde, 

The rider him ruleth and saueth from 
daunger. 85 

By which example Minalcas it is clere 

That free will is subiect to inconuenience, 

Where by subiection man voydeth great 


offence, 

For man of him selfe is very frayle cer- 
tayne, 

But ofte a ruler his folly dothe re- 
frayne, 90 

But as for thy selfe thou hast no cause 
pardie, 


To walke at pleasour is no captiuitie. 


Minalcas 
Seest thou not Codrus the fieldes rounde 
about 
Compassed with floudes that none may in 


nor out, 
The muddy waters nere choke me with 
the stinke, 95 
At euery tempest they be as blacke as 
inke: 


Pouertie to me should be no discomforte 
If other shepheardes were all of the same 
sorte. 


318 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


But Codrus I clawe oft where it doth 


not itche, 
To see ten beggers and halfe a dosen 
riche, 100 


Truely me thinketh this wrong pertition, 

And namely sith all ought be after one. 

When I first behelde these fieldes from a 
farre, 

Me thought them pleasant and voyde of 
strife or warre, 

But with my poore flocke approching 


nere and nere 105 

Alway my pleasour did lesse and lesse 
appeare, 

And truely Codrus since I came on this 
grounde 

Oft vnder floures vile snakes haue I 
founde, 


Adders and todes and many fell serpent, 

Infecte olde shepe with venim violent, 170 

And ofte be the yonge infected of the 
olde, 

That vnto these fewe nowe brought is all 
my folde. 


Codrus 


In some place is neyther venim nor ser- 
pent 
And as for my selfe I fele no greuous 


sent. 
Minalcas 
It were great maruell where so great 
grounde is sene, TI5 
If no small medowe were pleasaunt, swete 
and clene, 
As for thee Codrus I may beleue right 
weele, 


That thou no sauour nor stinke of mud 
dost feele, 

For if a shephearde hath still remayned 
longe 

In a foule prison or in a stinking gonge, 

His pores with ill ayre be stopped so 


echone 121 

That of the ayre he feleth small sent or 
none, 

And yet the dwellers be badder then the 
place, 

The riche and sturdie doth threaten and 
manace 

The poore and simple and suche as came 
but late, 125 


And who moste knoweth him moste of 
all they hate, 
And all the burthen is on the Asses backe, 


But the stronge Caball standeth at the 
racke. 
And suche be assigned sometime the flocke 


to kepe 
Which scant haue so muche of reason as 
the shepe, 130 


And euery shepheard at other hath enuy, 

Scant be a couple which loueth perfitely, 

Ill will so reygneth that brauling be thou 
sure, 

Constrayned me nere to seke a newe 
pasture, 

Saue onely after I hope of better rest, 135 

For small occasion a birde not chaungeth 
nest. 


Codrus 
Welere thou graunted that in a large 
grounde 
Some plot of pleasour and quiet may be 


founde, 

So where of heardes assembled is great 
sorte, 

There some must be good, then to the best 
resorte. 140 

But leaue we all this, turne to our poynt 
agayne, 


Of thy olde balades some would I heare 
full fayne, 

For often haue I had great pleasour and 
delite 

To heare recounted suche as thou did 
endite. 


Minalcas 
Yea, other shepheardes which haue 
inough at home, 145 
When ye be mery and stuffed is your 


wombe, 

Which haue great store of butter, chese 
and woll, 

Your cowes others of milke replete and 

l, 

Payles of swete milke as full as they be 
able, 

When your fat dishes smoke hote vpon 
your table, 150 

Then laude ye songes and balades magni- 
fie, 

If they be mery or written craftily, 

Ye clappe your handes and to the making 
harke, 

And one say to other, lo here a proper 
warke. 

But when ye haue saide nought geue ye 
for our payne, 155 


THE PROLOGUE 


Saue onely laudes and pleasaunt wordes 
vayne, 

All if these laudes may well be counted 
good, 

Yet the poore shepheard must haue some 
other food. 


Codrus. 
Mayst thou not sometime thy folde and 
shepe apply, 
And after at leasour to liue more quietly, 
Dispose thy wittes to make or to endite, 
Renouncing cures for time while thou 
dost write. 


Minalcas 


Nedes must a Shepheard bestowe his 
whole labour 
In tending his flockes, scant may he spare 


one houre: 
In going, comming, and often them to 
tende, 165 


Full lightly the day is brought vnto an 
ende. 

Sometime the wolues with dogges must 
he chace, 

Sometime his foldes must he newe com- 
pace: 

And oft time them chaunge, and if he 
stormes doubt, 

Of his shepecote dawbe the walles round 
about: 170 

When they be broken, oft times them 
renue, 

And hurtfull pastures note well, and them 
eschue. 

Bye strawe and litter, and hay for winter 
colde, 

Oft grease the scabbes aswell of yonge 
as olde. 

For dreade of thieues oft watche vp all 
the night, 175 

Beside this labour with all his minde and 
might, 

For his poore housholde for to prouide 
vitayle, 

If by aduenture his wooll or lambes 
fayle. 

In doing all these no respite doth re- 


mayne, 
But well to indite requireth all the 
brayne. 180 


I tell thee Codrus, a stile of excellence 
Must haue all laboure and all the dili- 
gence. 


AND ECLOGUE IV 319 


Both these two workes be great, nere im- 
portable 
To my small power, my strength is muche 


vnable. 

The one to intende scant may I bide the 
payne, 185 

Then is it harder for me to do both 
twayne, 

What time my wittes be clere for to 
indite, 


My dayly charges will graunt me no re- 
spite: 

But if I folowe, inditing at my will, 

Eche one disdayneth my charges to ful- 
fill. 190 

Though in these fieldes eche other ought 
sustayne, 

Cleane lost is that lawe, one may require 
in vayne: 

If coyne commaunde, then men count 
them as bounde, 

Els flee they labour, then is my charge 
on grounde. 


Codrus 


Cornix oft counted that man should flee 
no payne, 195 

His frendes burthen to supporte and sus- 
tayne: 

Feede they thy flocke, while thou doest 
write and sing, 

Eche horse agreeth not well for euery 
thing, 

Some for the charet, some for the cart or 
plough, 

And some for hakneyes, if they be light 
and tough. 200 

Eche field agreeth not well for euery 
seede, 

Who hath moste labour is worthy of best 
mede. 


Minalcas 


After inditing then gladly would I drinke, 

To reache me the cup no man doth care 
ne thinke: 

And oft some fooles voyde of discre- 
tion 205 

Me and my matters haue in derision. 

And meruayle is none, for who would 
sowe that fielde 

With costly seedes, which shall no fruites 
yelde. 

Some wanton body oft laugheth me to 
scorne, 


320 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


And saith: Minalcas, see howe thy pilche 


is torne, 210 
Thy hose and cokers be broken at the 
knee, 


Thou canst not stumble, for both thy 
shone may see. 

Thy beard like bristels, or like a porpos 
skin, 

Thy cloathing sheweth, thy winning is 
but thin: 

Such mocking tauntes renueth oft my 
care, 215 

And nowe be woods of fruit and leaues 
bare. 

And frostie winter hath made the fieldes 
white, 

For wrath and anger my lip and tonge 
I bite: 

For dolour I droupe, sore vexed with dis- 


dayne, 

My wombe all wasteth, wherfore I bide 
this payne: 220 

My wooll and wethers may scarsly feede 
my wombe, 

And other housholde which I retayne at 
home. 


Leane be my lambes, that no man will 
them bye, 
And yet their dammes they dayly sucke 


so dry, 
That from the vthers no licoure can we 
wring, 225 
Then without repast who can indite or 
sing. 


It me repenteth, if I haue any wit, 

As for my science, I wery am of it. 

And of my poore life I weary am, Co- 
drus, 

Sith my harde fortune for me disposeth 
thus, 230 

That of the starres and planettes eche 
one 

To poore Minalcas well fortunate is none. 

Knowen is the truth if it were clerely 
sought, 

That nowe to this time I still haue songe 
for nought: 

For youth is lusty, and of small thing 
hath nede, 235 

That time to age men geue no force nor 
heede. 

Ages condition is greatly contrary, 

Which nowe approcheth right still and 
craftyly, 


But what time age doth any man op- 
presse, 

If he in youth haue gathred no riches: 

Then passeth age in care and pouertie, 

For nede is grieuous with olde infirmitie: 

And age is fetred oft time with care and 
neede, 

When strength is faded and man hath 
nought to feede, 

When strength is faded, then hope of 
gayne is gone, 245 

In youthes season to make prouision, 

The litle Emmet is wise and prouident, 

In summer working with labour diligent, 

In her small caues conueying corne and 
grayne 

Her life in Winter to nourish and sus- 
tayne: 

And with her small mouth is busy it 
cutting, 

Least in her caues the same might growe 
or spring. 

So man of reason himselfe reputing sage, 

In youth should puruey, to liue theron in 
age. 

Codrus 

Men say that clerkes which knowe As- 
tronomy, 255 

Knowe certayne starres which longe to 
desteny : 

But all their saying is nothing veritable, 

Yet heare the matter, though it be but a 
fable. 

They say that Mercury doth Poetes 
fauoure, 

Under Jupiter be princes of honour: 260 

And men of riches, of wealth or dignitie, 

And all such other as haue aucthoritie: 

Mercury geueth to Poetes laureate 

Goodly conueyaunce, speeche pleasaunt 


and ornate, 
Inuentife reason to sing or play on 
harpe, 265 


In goodly ditie or balade for to carpe. 

This is thy lot, what seekest thou riches? 

No man hath all, this thing is true doubt- 
lesse. 

God all disposeth as he perceyueth best. 

Take thou thy fortune, and holde thee still 
in rest: 270 

Take thou thy fortune, and holde thy 
selfe content, 

Let vs haue riches and rowmes excellent, 


THE PROLOGUE 


Minalcas 
Thou haste of riches and goodes haboun- 
daunce, 
And I haue dities and songes of pleas- 
aunce: 
To aske my cunning to couetous thou 


art, 
Why is not thy selfe contented with thy 


part, 

Why doest thou inuade my part and por- 
tion, 

Thou wantest (Codrus) wit and discre- 
tion. 

Codrus 

Not so Minalcas, forsooth thou art to 
blame, 

Of wronge inuasion to geue to me the 
name. 280 


I would no ditie nor ballade take thee fro, 

No harpe nor armes which long to 
Apollo: 

But onely, Minalcas, I sore desire and 
longe 

To geue mine eares to thy sweete sound- 
ing song. 

It feedeth hearing, and is to one pleas- 
aunt, 285 

To heare good reason and ballade con- 
sonant. 


Minalcas. 
If thou haue pleasure to heare my melody, 
I graunt thee Codrus to ioy my armony, 
So haue I pleasure and ioy of thy riches, 
So giftes doubled increaseth loue doubt- 
lesse. 290 
Codrus 
He of my riches hath ioy which loueth 
me, 
And who me hateth, nothing content is 
he. 
Enuious wretches by malice commonly 
Take others fortune and pleasure heauyly. 


Minalcas 
In like wise mayst thou inioy of our 
science, 295 
And of our Muses though thou be fro 


presence: 

And of our cunning thou ioyest sembla- 
bly, 

If nought prouoke thee by malice and 
enuy. 

278. The bracketed word is so bracketed in the 


text. Similarly in lines 411, 467, 587, 607, 
629, 663, 811, 847, 911. 


AND ECLOGUE IV 321 


If I feede thy eares, feede thou my mouth 


agayne, 
I loth were to spende my giftes all in 
vayne. 300 
Meate vnto the mouth is foode and suste- 
naunce, 


And songes feede the eares with pleas- 
aunce, 

I haue the Muses, if thou wilt haue of 
mine, 

Then right requireth that I haue part of 
thine. 

This longeth to loue, to nourish charitee 

This feedeth pitie, this doth to right 
agree 

This is the pleasure and will of God 
aboue, 

Of him disposed for to ingender loue. 

All pleasaunt giftes one man hath not 


pardie, 
That one of other should haue neces- 
sitie. 310 


No man of him selfe is sure sufficistent, 

This is prouision of God omnipotent. 

That one man should neede anothers as- 
sistence, 

Thereby is ioyned loue and beneuolence. 

Englande hath cloth, Burdeus hath store 


of wine, 315 
Cornewall hath tinne, and lymster wools 
fine. 


London hath scarlet, and Bristowe pleas- 
aunt red, 

Fen lande hath fishes, in other place is 
lead. 

This is of our Lorde disposed so my 
brother 

Because all costes should one haue neede 
of other. 320 

So euery tree hath fruit after his kinde, 

And diuers natures in beastes may we 
finde. 

Alway when nature of thing is moste 
laudable, 

That thing men counteth most good and 


profitable. 

And euery person in his owne gift hath 
ioy 325 

The foole in his bable hath pleasure for 
to toy. 

The clerke in his bookes, the merchaunt 
in riches, 


The knight in his horse, harnes and 
hardynes. 


322 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


But euery person of his giftes and art, 

When nede requireth should gladly geue 
some part. 330 

Such meane conioyneth in bonde of loue 
certayne, 

Englande and Fraunce, Scotlande, Grece 
and Spain. 

So hast thou Codrus of golde ynough in 
store, 

And I some cunning, though fewe men 
care therfore. 

Thou art beholden to Jupiter truely, 335 

And I beholden to pleasaunt Mercury, 

Joyne we our starres, let me haue part 
of thine, 

Concorde to cherishe, thou shalt haue part 
of mine. 

Make thou Jupiter be frendly vnto me, 

And our Mercury shalbe as good to 
thee 340 

If thy Jupiter geue me but onely golde, 

Mercury shall geue thee giftes many- 
folde. 

His pillion, scepter, his winges and his 
harpe, 

If thou haue all these thou mayst grathly 
carpe. 

And ouer all these geue thee shall Mer- 
cury 345 

The knot of Hercules inlaced craftyly. 


Codrus 
Lorde God, Minalcas, why haste thou 
all this payne 
Thus wise to forge so many wordes in 
vayne. 


Minalcas 
That vayne thou countest which may 
hurt or inlesse 350 


Thy loued treasure, or minishe thy 
riches : 

If thou wilt harken or heare my Muses 
sing, 

Refreshe my mindes with confort and 
liking, 

Rid me fro troubles and care of busynes, 

Confort my courage which nowe is com- 
fortlesse. 355 

A clerke or poete combined with a boye, 

To haunt the Muses or write hath litle 
ioy 

The wit and reason is dull or of valour 

Like as the body is called to honour. 

When busy charges causeth a man to 
grone, 


The wit then slumbreth, and Muses all 
be gone. 360 

A ditie will haue minde quiet and respite, 

And ease of stomake, els can none well 
indite, 

I sighe, I slumber, care troubleth oft my 
thought, 

When some by malice mine art setteth at 
nought. 

I hewle as a kite for hunger and for 
golde, 365 

For thought and study my youth appereth 
olde: 

My skin hath wrinkles and pimples round 
about, 

For colde and study I dreade me of the 
gowte. 

When sickenes commeth then life hath 
breuitie 

By false vnkindnes and wretched pouer- 
tie. 370 

If men were louing, benigne and chari- 
table, 

Then were pouertie both good and toller- 
able: 

But since charitie and pitie both be gone, 

What should pouertie remayne behinde 
alone. 

No man hath pitie, eche dayneth me to 


feede, 375 
I lost haue confort, but still remayneth 
neede: 


I haue no wethers nor ewes in my folde, 

No siluer in purse, I knowe not what is 
golde: 

No corne on the grounde haue I whereon 
to fare, 

Then would thou haue me to liue auoyde 
of care. 380 

Nay nay frende Codrus, trust me, I thee 
assure 

Such maner salues can not my dolour 
cure. 

Make thou me iocunde, helpe me with 
cloth and foode, 

Clothe me for winter with pilche, felt 
and hoode. 

Auoyde all charges, let me sit in my 
cell, 385 

Let worldly wretches with worldly mat- 
ters mell. 

Succoure my age, regarde my heares 
gray, 

Then shalt thou proue and see what thing 
I may: 


THE PROLOGUE 


Then shalt thou finde me both apt to 
write and sing, 
Good will shall fulfill my scarcenes of 


cunning, 390 
A plentifull house out chaseth thought 
and care, 


Soiourne doth sorowe there where all 
thing is bare, 

The seller couched with bere, with ale or 
wine, 

And meates ready when man hath lust 
to dine. 

Great barnes full, fat wethers in the 


folde, 395 

The purse well stuffed with siluer and 
with golde. 

Fauour of frendes, and suche as loueth 
right 

All these and other do make thee full 
light, 

Then is it pleasure the yonge maydens 
amonge 

To watche by the fire the winters nightes 
longe 400 

At their fonde tales to laugh, or when 
they brall, 


Great fire and candell spending for la- 
boure small, 

And in the ashes some playes for to 
marke, 

To couer wardens for fault of other 
warke. 

To toste white sheuers, and to make pro- 
phitroles, 405 

And after talking oft time to fill the 
bowles. 

Where wealth aboundeth without rebuke 
or crime, 

Thus do some heardes for pleasure and 
pastime: 

As fame reporteth, such a Shepherde 
there was, 

Which that time liued vnder Mecenas. 470 

And Titerus (I trowe) was this shep- 
herdes name, 

I well remember aliue yet is his fame. 

He songe of fieldes and tilling of the 


grounde, 
Of shepe, of oxen, and battayle did he 
sounde. 414 


So shrill he sounded in termes eloquent, 

I trowe his tunes went to the firmament. 

The same Mecenas to him was free and 
kinde, 


AND ECLOGUE IV 323 


Whose large giftes gaue confort to his 
minde: 

Also this Shepherde by heauenly influ- 
ence 

I trowe obtayned his perelesse eloquence. 

We other Shepherdes be greatly differ- 


ent, 421 
Of common sortes, leane, ragged and 
rent. 


Fed with rude frowise, with quacham, or 
with crudd, 

Or slimy kempes ill smelling of the mud. 

Such rusty meates inblindeth so our 


brayne, 425 
That of our fauour the muses haue dis- 
dayne: 


And great Apollo despiseth that we write 
For why rude wittes but rudely do indite. 


Codrus. 


I trust on fortune, if it be fauourable, 
My trust fulfilling, then shall I well be 


able 430 
Thy neede to succoure, I hope after a 
thing, 


And if fortune fall well after my liking, 
Trust me Minalcas, I shall deliuer thee 
Out of this trouble, care and calamitie. 


Minalcas 
A Codrus Codrus, I would to God thy 
will 435 
Were this time ready thy promise to ful- 
fill 
After the power and might that thou 


haste nowe. 

Thou haste ynough for both, man God 
auowe. 

If thy good minde according with thy 
might, 

At this time present thou should my heart 
well light. 440 


I aske not the store of Cosmus or Capell, 
With silken robes I couete not to mell. 
No kinges dishes I couete nor desire, 
Nor riche mantels, or palles wrought in 
alice}: 
No cloth of golde, of Tissue nor vel- 
uet, 445 
Damaske nor Sattin, nor orient Scarlet. 
I aske no value of Peters costly cope, 
Shield of Minerua, nor patin of Esope. 
I aske no palace, nor lodging curious, 
No bed of state, of rayment sumptuous. 


324 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


For this I learned of the Dean of Powles, 

I tell thee Codrus, this man hath won 
some soules. 

I aske no treasure nor store of worldly 
good, 

But a quiet life, and onely cloth and 
foode, 

With homely lodging to keepe me warme 
and drye 455 

Induring my life, forsooth no more aske 


If I were certaine this liuing still to haue, 
Auoyde of trouble, no more of God I 


craue. 
Codrus 

This liuing haste thou, what needest thou 
complayne, 

Nothing thou wantest which may thy life 
sustayne: 460 

What feele man, pardie thy chekes be 
not thin, 


No lacke of vitayle causeth a double chin. 


Minalcas. 

Some beast is lustie and fat of his nature, 

Though he sore laboure, and go in bad 
pasture. 

And some beast agayne still leane and 
poore is seene, 465 

Thogh it fatly fare within a medowe 
greene. 

Though thou would (Codrus) stil argue 
til to morow, 

I licke no dishes which sauced be with 
sorowe. 


Better one small dish with ioy and heart 
liking 

Then diuers daynties with murmure and 
grutching. 470 

And men vnlearned can neuer be con- 
tent, 

When scolers common, and clerkes be 
present. 


Assoone as clerkes begin to talke and 
chat, 

Some other glowmes, and hath enuy 
thereat. 

It is a torment a clerke to sit at borde, 475 

And of his learning not for to talke one 
worde. 

Better were to be with clerkes with a 
crust, 

Then at such tables to fare at will and 
lust. 


Let me haue the borde of olde Pithag- 
oras, 

Which of temperaunce a very father 
was. 480 

Of Philosophers the moderate riches 

In youth or age I loued neuer excesse. 

Some boast and promise, and put men 
in confort 

Of large giftes, moste men be of this 
sort, 

With mouth and promise for to be liber- 
all, 485 

When nede requireth, then geue they 
nought at all. 

All onely in thee is fixed all my trust, 

If thou fayle promise then rowle I in 
the dust, 

My hope is faded, then shall my songe 
be dom 

Like a Nightingale at the solstitium. 490 

If thou fayle promise, my comfort cleane 


is lost, 

Then may I hange my pipe vpon the 
poste: 

Shet the shop windowes for lacke of 
marchaundise, 

Or els for because that easy is the price. 

Codrus 

Minalcas, if thou the court of Rome 

haste seene, 495 


With forked cappes or els if thou haste 
beene, 

Or noble Prelates by riches excellent, 

Thou well perceyuest they be magnifi- 
cent. 

With them be clerkes and pleasaunt Ora- 
tours, 

And many Poetes promoted to honours, 

There is aboundaunce of all that men 


desire, 501 
There men hath honour before they it re- 
quire: 


In such fayre fieldes without labour or 
payne 

Both wealth and riches thou lightly mayst 
obtayne. 

Minalcas 

Thou art abused, and thinkest wrong 
doubtlesse 505 

To thinke that I am desirous of riches. 

To feede on rawe fleshe it is a wolues 
gise, 

Wherfore he weneth all beastes do like- 
wise. 


THE PROLOGUE 


Because the blinde man halteth and is 


lame, 

In minde he thinketh that all men do the 
same. 510 

So for that thy selfe desirest good in 
store, 

All men thou iudgest infected with like 
sore. 


Codrus, I couet not to haue aboundaunce, 

Small thing me pleaseth, I aske but suffi- 
saunce. 

Graunt me a liuing sufficient and small, 

And voyde of troubles, I aske no more 
at all. 516 

But with that litle I holde my selfe con- 
tent, 

If sauce of sorowe my mindes not tor- 
ment. 

Of the court of Rome forsooth I haue 
heard tell, 

With forked cappes it folly is to mell. 520 

Micene and Morton be dead and gone 
certayne, 

They, nor their like shall neuer returne 
agayne. 

O Codrus Codrus, Augustus and Ed- 
warde 

Be gone for euer, our fortune is more 
harde. 

The scarlet robes in songe haue small 


delite, 525 
What should I trauayle, in Rome is no 
profite, 


It geueth mockes and scornes manyfolde, 

Still catching coyne, and gaping after 
golde, 

Fraude and disceyte doth all the world 


, 


And money reygneth and doth all thing 


at will. 530 
And for that people would more intende 
to gile, 


Uertue and truth be driuen into exile. 
We are commaunded to trust for time to 


come 

Till care and sorowe hath wasted our 
wisedome. 

Hope of rewarde hath Poetes them to 
feede, 535 


Nowe in the worlde fayre wordes be 
their mede. 


Codrus 
Then write of battayles, or actes of men 
bolde, 


AND ECLOGUE IV 325 


Or mightie princes, they may thee well 
vpholde, 

These worthy rulers of fame and name 
royall 

Of very reason ought to be liberall. 540 

Some shalt thou finde betwene this place 
and Kent, 

Which for thy labour shall thee right 
well content. 


Minalcas 
Yea, some shall I finde which be so prod- 
igall, 
That in vayne thinges spende and cleane 
wasteth all: 
But howe should that man my pouertie 


sustayne, 545 
Which nought reserueth his honoure to 
mayntayne. 


For auncient bloud nor auncient honoure 

In these our dayes be nought without 
treasure. 

The coyne auaunceth, neede doth the 
name deiect, 

And where is treasure olde honour hath 
effect. 550 

But such as be riche and in promotion 

Shall haue my writing but in derision. 

For in this season great men of excel- 
lence 

Haue to poemes no greater reuerence, 

Then to a brothell or els a brothelhouse, 

Mad ignoraunce is so contagious. 556 


Codrus 
It is not seeming a Poet thus to iest 
In wrathful speeche, nor wordes dis- 
honest. 
Minalcas 
It is no iesting, be thou neuer so wroth, 
In open language to say nothing but 
troth: 560 
If peraduenture thou would haue troth 
kept still, 
Prouoke thou not me to anger at thy 
will. 
When wrath is moued, then reason hath 
no might, 
The tonge forgetteth discretion and right. 


Codrus 
To moue thy minde I truely were full 
lothe, 565 
To geue good councell is farre from being 
wrothe. 


326 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


Minalcas 

As touching councell, my minde is plen- 
tifull, 

But neede and troubles make all my rea- 
son dull, 

If I had councell and golde in like plen- 
tie, 

I tell thee Codrus, I had no neede of 
thee. 570 

Howe should a Poet, poore, bare and 
indigent, 

Indite the actes of princes excellent, 

While scant is he worth a knife his pipe 
to mende, 

To rounde the holes, to clense or picke 
the ende. 

Beholde, my whittle almoste hath lost the 
blade, BAS 

So long time past is sith the same was 
made: 

The haft is bruised, the blade not worth 


a strawe, 

Rusty and toothed, not much vnlike a 
sawe. 

But touching this hurt, it is but light and 
small, 

But care and trouble is grieuous payne 
withall. 580 


Good counsell helpeth, making the wittes 
stable, 

Ill councell maketh the mindes variable, 

And breaketh the brayne, diminishing the 


strength, 

And all the reason confoundeth at the 
length. 

Great men are shamed to geue thing 
poore or small, 585 


And great they denye, thus geue they 
nought at all. 

Beside this (Codrus) princes and men 
royall 

In our inditinges haue pleasure faint and 
small, 

So much power haue they with men of 
might, 

As simple doues when Egles take their 


flight : 590 
Or as great windes careth for leaues 
drye. 


They liue in pleasure and wealth contin- 
ually, 

In lust their liking is, and in ydlenes, 

Fewe haue their mindes clean from all 
viciousnes : 


Pleasure is thing whereto they moste 
intende, 595 

That they moste cherishe, they would 
haue men concend 

If Poetes should their maners magnify, 

They were supporters of blame and 
lechery: 

Then should their writing be nothing 
commendable, 

Conteyning iestes and deedes detesta- 
ble, 600 

Of stinking Uenus or loue inordinate, 

Of ribaude wordes which fall not for a 
state, 

Of right oppressed, and beastly gluttony, 

Of vice aduaunced, of slouth and iniury, 

And other deedes infame and worthy 


blame, 605 
Which were ouerlonge here to recount 
or name. 


These to commend (Codrus) do not 
agree 
To any Poete which loueth chastitie. 


Codrus 

What yes Minalcas, some haue bene 
stronge and bolde, 

Which haue in battayle done actes many- 
folde, 610 

With mighty courage hauing them in 
fight, 

And boldly biding for to maynteyne the 
right. 

To thee could I nowe rehearse well nere 
a score 

Of lust nor riches setting no force ne 
store. 

Despising oft golde, sweete fare and 
beddes soft, 615 

Which in colde harnes lye on the grounde 
full oft, 

Closed in yron, which when their woundes 
blede, 

Want bread and drinke them to restore 
and feede. 

While some haue pleasure in softe golde 
orient, 

With colde harde yron their minde is well 
content. 620 

Such were the sonnes of noble lord 
Hawarde, 

Whose famous actes may shame a faint 
cowarde. 

What could they more but their swete 
liues spende, 


THE PROLOGUE 


Their princes quarell and right for to 
defende: 

Alas that battayle should be of that ri- 
gour, 625 

When fame and honour riseth and is in 
floure, 

With sodayne furour then all to quenche 
agayne, 

But boldest heartes be nerest death cer- 
tayne. 


Minalcas 
For certayne (Codrus) I can not that 
denye, 
But some in battayle behaue them man- 
fully, 630 


Such as in battayle do actes marciall, 

Laude worthy Poetes and stile heroicall: 

The pleasaunt Muses which soundeth 
grauitie 

Had helpe and fauour while these were 
in degree. 

But sith stronge knightes hath left their 
exercise, 

And manly vertue corrupted is with vice, 

The famous Poetes which ornately indite 

Haue founde no matter whereof to singe 
or write. 

The wit thus dyeth of poetes auncient, 

So doth their writing and ditie eloquent. 

For lacke of custome, thought, care and 
penury, 641 

These be confounders of pleasaunt poecy. 

But if some prince, some king or con- 
querour 

Hath won in armes or battayle great 
honour : 

Full litle they force for to delate their 
fame, 

That other realmes may laude or prayse 
their name. 

Of time for to come they force nothing 
at all, 

By fame and honour to liue as immortall : 

It them suffiseth, they count ynough true- 


ly 
That their owne realmes their names 
magnify. 650 


And that for their life they may haue 
laude and fame, 

After their death then seeke they for no 
name: 

And some be vntaught and learned no 
science, 

Or els they disdayne hye stile of elo- 
quence: 


AND!) ECLOGUE IV 327 


Then standeth the Poet and his poeme 
arere, 

When princes disdayne them for to reade 
or here. 

Or els some other is drowned all in golde, 

By couetise kept in cares manyfolde. 

By flagrant ardour inflamed in suche case, 

As in time past the olde king Midas was. 

Then of poemes full small pleasure hath 
he, 661 

Couetise and clergy full lewdly do agree. 

Beside this (Codrus) with princes com- 
monly 

Be vntaught courtiers fulfilled with enuy. 

Jugglers and Pipers, bourders and flat- 
terers, 

Baudes and Janglers, and cursed aduout- 
rers: 

And mo such other of liuing vicious 

To whom is vertue aduerse and odious. 

These do good Poetes forth of all courtes 


chase, 
By thousande maners of threatning and 
manace, 670 
Sometime by fraudes, sometime by ill 
reporte, 


And them assisteth all other of their sort: 

Like as when curres light on a carion, 

Or stinking rauens fed with corruption: 

These two all other away do beate and 
chace, 

Because they alone would occupy the 
place. 

For vnto curres is carion moste meete, 

And also rauens fele stinking thinges 
sweete. 

Another thing yet is greatly more damna- 
ble, 

Of rascolde poetes yet is a shamfull 
rable, 680 

Which voyde of wisedome presumeth to 
indite, 

Though they haue scantly the cunning 
of a snite: 

And to what vices that princes moste 
intende, 

Those dare these fooles solemnize and 
commende. 

Then is he decked as Poete laureate, 

When stinking Thais made him her grad- 


uate. 

When Muses rested, she did her season 
note, 

And she with Bacchus her camous did 
promote: 


328 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


Such rascold drames promoted by Thais, 

Bacchus, Licoris, or yet by Testalis, 690 

Or by suche other newe forged Muses 
nine 

Thinke in their mindes for to haue wit 
diuine. 

They laude their verses, they boast, they 
vaunt and iet, 

Though all their cunning be scantly 
worth a pet. 

If they haue smelled the artes triuiall, 

They count them Poetes hye and heroic- 
all. 

Such is their foly, so foolishly they dote, 

Thinking that none can their playne er- 
rour note: 

Yet be they foolishe, auoyde of honestie, 

Nothing seasoned with spice of grauitie, 

Auoyde of pleasure, auoyde of eloquence, 

With many wordes, and fruitlesse of sen- 
tence. 702 

Unapt to learne, disdayning to be taught, 

Their priuate pleasure in snare hath 
them so caught: 

And worst yet of all, they count them ex- 
cellent, 

Though they be fruitlesse, rashe and im- 
prouident. 

To suche Ambages who doth their minde 
incline, 

They count all other as priuate of doc- 
trine, 

And that the faultes which be in them 
alone, 

Also be common in other men eche one. 

Thus bide good Poetes oft time rebuke 


and blame, aa 
Because of other which haue despised 
name. 


And thus for the bad the good be cleane 
abiect, 

Their art and poeme counted of none 
effect. 

Who wanteth reason good to discerne 
from ill 

Doth worthy writers interprete at his 
will: 

So both the laudes of good and not 
laudable 

For lacke of knowledge become vituper- 
able. 

Codrus 

In fayth Minalcas, I well allowe thy wit, 

Yet would I gladly heare nowe some 
mery fit 720 


Of mayde Marion, or els of Robin hood, 

Or Bentleys ale which chaseth well the 
bloud: 

Of perte of Norwiche, or sauce of Wil- 
berton, 

Or buckishe Joly well stuffed as a ton: 

Talke of the bottell, let go the booke for 
nowe, 

Combrous is cunning I make to God a 
vowe. 

Speake of some matter which may re- 
fresh my brayne, 

Trust me Minalcas, I shall rewarde thy 
payne. 

Els talke of stoutenes, where is more 
brayne then wit, 

Place moste abused that we haue spoke 


of yet. 730 
Minalcas 
Of all these thinges language to multi- 
ply, 


Except I lyed, should be but vilany. 

It is not seeming a Poete one to blame, 

All if his hauour hath won diffamed 
name. 

And though such beastes pursue me with 
enuy, 735 

Malgre for malice, that payment I de- 
fye. 

My master teacheth, so doth reason and 
skill, 

That man should restore, and render good 
for ill. 


Codrus 
Then talke of somewhat, lo it is longe 
to night, 
Yet hath the sonne more then an houre 
of light, 740 
Minalcas 
If I ought common sounding to grauitie, 
I feare to obtayne but small rewarde of 
thee: 
But if I common of vice or wantonnes, 
Then of our Lorde shall my rewarde be 
lesse, 
Wherefore my ballade shall haue con- 
clusion 7 
On fruitfull clauses of noble Salomon. 


Codrus 
Sing on Minalcas, he may do litle thing, 
Which to a ballade disdayneth the hear- 
ing: 
But if thy ditie accorde not to my minde, 


THE PROLOGUE 


Then my rewarde and promise is be- 
hinde, 750 

By mans manners it lightly doth appere, 

What men desire, that loue they for to 
here. 

Minalcas 

Though in thy promise I finde no cer- 
tentie, 

Yet of my cunning shalt thou haue part 
of me, 

I call no muses to geue to me doctrine, 

But ayde and confort of strength and 
might diuine, 

To clere my reason with wisedom and 
prudence 

To sing one ballade extract of sapience. 





As medoes paynted with floures redolent 

The sight reioyce of suche as them be- 
holde : 760 

So man indued with vertue excellent 

Fragrantly shineth with beames many- 
folde. 

Uertue with wisedome exceedeth store of 
gold, 

If riches abound, set not on them thy 
trust. 

When strength is sturdy, then man is pert 
and bolde, 765 

But wit and wisedome soone lay him in 
the dust. 


That man is beastly which sueth carnall 
lust, 

Spende not on women thy riches or sub- 
staunce, 

For lacke of vsing as stele or yron rust, 

So rusteth reason by wilfull ignoraunce. 

In fraudfull beautie set but small pleas- 
aunce, 771 

A pleasaunt apple is oft corrupt within, 

Grounde thee in youth on goodly gouern- 
aunce, 

It is good token when man doth well 
begin. 


Toy not in malice, that is a mortall sinne, 
Man is perceyued by language and doc- 
trine, 776 
Better is to lose then wrongfully to winne, 
He loueth wisedome, which loueth disci- 
pline: 
Rashe enterprises oft bringeth to ruine, 
A man may contende, God geueth victory, 
Set neuer thy minde on thing which is not 
thine, 781 


AND ECLOGUE IV 329 


Trust not in honour, all wealth is transi- 
tory, 


Combine thou thy tonge with reason and 
memory, 

Speake not to hasty without aduisement, 

So liue in this life that thou mayst trust 
on glory, 785 

Which is not caduke, but lasting perma- 
nent. 

There is no secrete with people vinolent, 

By beastly surfeit the life is breuiate, 

Though some haue pleasure in sumptu- 
ous garment, 

Yet goodly manners him maketh more 


ornate. 790 
Codrus 
Ho there Minalcas, of this haue we 
ynough, 


What should a Ploughman go farther 
then his plough, 

What should a shepherde in wisedome 
wade so farre, 

Talke he of tankarde, or of his boxe of 
tarre. 

Tell somewhat els, wherein is more con- 
forte, 795 

So shall the season and time seeme light 
and short. 


Minalcas 
For thou of Hawarde nowe lately did 
recite, 
I haue a ditie which Cornix did indite: 
His death complayning, but it is lament- 
able 
To heare a Captayne so good and honor- 


able, 800 

So soone withdrawen by deathes cruel- 
tie, 

Before his vertue was at moste hye de- 
gree. 

If death for a season had shewed him 
fauour, d 

To all his nation he should haue bene 
honour, 

Alas, bolde heartes be nerest death in 
warre, 805 


When out of daunger cowardes stande 
a farre. 
Codrus 
All if that ditie be neuer so lamentable, 
Refrayne my teares I shall as I am able. 
Begin Minalcas, tell of the bolde hawarde, 
If fortune fauour hope after some re- 
warde. 810 


330 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


Minalcas 
I pray thee Codrus (my whey is weake 
and thin) 
Lende me thy bottell to drinke or I begin. 
Codrus 


If ought be tasted, the remnant shall pall, 

I may not aforde nowe for to spende out 
all. 

We sit in shadowe, the sunne is not fer- 
uent, 815 

Call for it after, then shall I be content. 


Minalcas 
Still thou desirest the pleasure of my art, 
But of thy bottell nought wilt thou yet 
depart, 
Though thou be nigard, and nought wilt 
geue of thine, 
Yet this one time thou shalt haue part of 
mine. - 820 
Nowe harken Codrus, I tell mine elegy, 
But small is the pleasure of dolefull 
armony. 


The description of the Towre of vertue 
and honour, into the which the noble 
Hawarde contended to enter by 
worthy actes of Chiualry. 


Minalcas speaketh 
High on a mountayne of highnes maruel- 
ous, 
With pendant cliffes of stones harde as 
flent, 
Is made a castell or toure moste curious, 
Dreadfull vnto sight, but inwarde excel- 
lent. 
Such as would enter finde paynes and 
torment, 
So harde is the way vnto the same moun- 
tayne, 
Streyght, hye and thorny, turning and 
different, 
That many labour for to ascende in 
vayne. 830 


Who doth perseuer, and to this toure 
attayne 

Shall haue great pleasure to see the build- 
ing olde, 

Joyned and graued, surmounting mans 
brayne, 

And all the walles within of fynest golde, 

With olde historyes, and pictures many- 
folde, 

Glistering as bright as Phebus orient, 


With marble pillers the building to vp- 
holde, 
About be turrets of shape most excellent. 


This towre is gotten by labour diligent, 

In it remayne such as haue won honoure 

By holy liuing, by strength or tourna- 
ment, 841 

And moste by wisedome attayne vnto this 
towre: 

Briefely, all people of godly behauour, 

By rightwise battayle, Justice and equitie, 

Or that in mercy hath had a chiefe plea- 
sour: 

In it haue rowmes eche after his degree. 


This goodly Castell (thus shining in 
beautie ) 

Is named Castell of vertue and honour, 

In it eyght Henry is in his maiestie 

Moste hye enhaunsed as ought a con- 
querour : 850 

In it remayneth the worthy gouernour, 

A stocke and fountayne of noble pro- 


geny, 
Moste noble Hawarde the duke and pro- 
tectour, 
Named of Northfolke the floure of chiu- 
alry. . 


Here is the Talbot manfull and hardy, 

With other princes and men of dignitie, 

Which to win honour do all their might 
apply, 

Supporting Justice, concorde and equitie: 

The manly Corson within this towre I 
see, 

These haue we seene eche one in his 


estate, 860 
With many other of hye and meane de- 
gree, 


For marciall actes with crownes laureate. 


Of this stronge castell is porter at the 
gate 

Strong sturdy labour, much like a cham- 
pion, 

But goodly vertue a lady moste ornate 

Within gouerneth with great prouision: 

But of this castell in the moste hyest 
trone 

Is honour shining in rowme imperiall, 

Which vnrewarded of them leaueth not 


one 
That come by labour and vertue princi- 
pall. 870 


THE PROLOGUE 


Fearefull is labour without fauour at all, 

Dreadfull of visage, a monster intreat- 
able, 

Like Cerberus lying at gates infernall, 

To some men his looke is halfe intoller- 
able, 

His shoulders large, for burthen strong 
and able, 

His body bristled, his necke mightie and 
stiffe, 

By sturdy senewes his ioyntes stronge 
and stable, 

Like marble stones his handes be as stiffe. 


Here must man vanquishe the dragon of 
Cadmus, 

Against the Chimer here stoutly must he 
fight, 880 

Here must he vanquish the fearefull Peg- 
asus, 

For the golden flece here must he shewe 
his might: 

If labour gaynsay, he can nothing be 
right, 

This monster labour oft chaungeth his 
figure, 

Some time an oxe, a bore, or lion wight, 

Playnely he seemeth, thus chaungeth his 
nature. 


Like as Protheus oft chaunged his stat- 
ure, 

Mutable of figure oft times in one houre, 

When Aristeus in bondes had him sure: 

To diuers figures likewise chaungeth 
labour, 890 

Under his browes he dreadfully doth 
loure, 

With glistering eyen, and side depend- 
aunt beard, 

For thirst and hunger alway his chere is 
soure, 

His horned forehead doth make faynt 
heartes feard. 


Alway he drinketh, and yet alway is 
drye, 895 

The sweat distilling with droppes aboun- 
daunt, 

His breast and forehead doth humours 


multiply 

By sweating showres, yet is this payne 
pleasaunt: 

Of day and night his resting time is 
scant, 


No day ouerpasseth exempt of busynes, 


AND ECLOGUE IV 331 


His sight infourmeth the rude and ignor- 
ant, 

Who dare perseuer, he geueth them 
riches. 


None he auaunceth but after stedfastnes, 

Of litle burthen his bely is, and small, 

His mighty thyes his vigour doth ex- 
pres, 905 

His shankes sturdy, and large feete with- 
all: 

By wrath he rageth, and still doth chide 
and brall, 

Such as would enter repelling with his 
crye, 

As well estates as homely men rurall — 

At the first entry he threatneth yrefully. 


I trowe olde fathers (whom men nowe 
magnify) 

Called this monster Minerua stoute and 
soure, 

For strength and senewes of man moste 
commonly 913 

Are tame and febled by cures and laboure. 

Great Hercules the mighty conquerour 

Was by this monster ouerccome and 
superate, 

All if he before vnto his great honour 

The sonne of Uenus had strongly subiu- 
gate. 


Who would with honour be purely laure- 


ate, 
Must with this monster longe time before 
contende, 920 


But lightly is man ouercome and fati- 
gate, 

To lady vertue if he not well intende: 

When strength is febled she helpeth at 
the ende, 

Opening the gates and passage to honour, 

By whose assistaunce soone may a man 
ascende 925 

The hye degrees of the triumphant Tour. 


Mankinde inflamed by goodly behauour 

Of lady vertue come to this towre with 
payne, 

But for the entree pretendeth them rigour 

Many one abasheth, rebuking backe 
agayne: 930 

To purchase honour they would be gla 
and fayne, 

But fearefull labour, the porter is so fell, 

To them proclaming, their enterprise is 
vayne, 


332 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


Except they before with him contende 
and mell. 


Here moste of all muste mans might ex- 


cell 935 
With stedfast courage and sure per- 
seueraunce, 
Els shall this monster him backe agayne 
repell, 


But man preuayleth by long continuaunce. 
No costly treasour nor Jewell of pleas- 


aunce 
Without price or payne can man in earth 
come by: 940 


So without labour doth vertue none 
aduaunce 
To parfite honour and noble seignory. 


Faynt cowarde mindes soone at the first 


escry 
Of sturdie labour, fall to the grounde as 
lame, 
Els runne they back warde fast fleing 
cowardly, 945 
As hartles wretches caring nothing for 
shame: 


But noble heartes to win immortall name, 

Fight at these gates till they ouercome 
labour, 

Then lady vertue with good report and 
fame 

Suche knightes gideth to laude and hye 
honour. 950 


But cruell fortune to some is harde and 


soure, 

That after trauell and many deadly 
wounde, 

When lady vertue should graunt to them 
this toure 

Then frowarde fortune them beateth to 
the ground: 954 


Of this examples ouer many do abounde, 

But chiefly this one, the noble lorde 
Hawarde, 

When he chiefe honour was worthy to 
haue founde, 

False death and fortune bereft him his 
rewarde. 


Longe he contended in battayle strong 
and harde, 
With payne and labour, with might repel- 


ling wrong, 960 


No backe he turned as doth some faint 
cowarde, 


But with this monster boldly contended 
long, 

When he had broken the locke and doores 
stronge, 

Ouercome the porter, and should ascende 
the toure, 

To liue in honour hye conquerours 
amonge, 965 

Then cruell fortune and death did him 
deuoure. 


Though he were borne to glory and 
honour, 

Of auncient stocke and noble progenie, 

Yet thought his courage to be of more 
valour, 

By his owne actes and noble chiualry. 

Like as becommeth a knight to fortifye 

His princes quarell with right and equitie, 

So did this hawarde with courage val- 
iauntly, 973 

Till death abated his bolde audacitie. 


O happy Samson more fortunate then he 

Onely in strength, but not in hye courage, 

O cruell fortune why durst thy crueltie 

This floure of knighthood to slea in lusty 
age, 

Thou hast debated the floure of his lin- 


age, 

If thou had mercy bewayle his death thou 
might, 980 

For cruell lions and mo beastes sauage 

Long time not ceased for to bewayle this 
knight, 


O death thou haste done agaynst both 
lawe and right, 

To spare a cowarde without daunger or 
wounde, 

And thus soone to quench of chiualry the 


light, 985 
O death enuious moste enemie to our 
grounde, 


What moste auayleth thou soonest doest 
confounde: 

Why did not vertue assist hir champion? 

Thou might haue ayded, for soothly thou 
was bounde, 

For during his life he loued thee 
alone, 990 


O God almightie in thy eternall trone, 

To whom all vertue is deare and accept- 
able, 

If reason suffred to thee our crye and 
mone, 


THE PROLOGUE 


This dede might impute and fortune la- 
mentable, . 
Thou might haue left vs this knight moste 


honorable, 995 
Our wealth and honour to haue kept in 
degree: 
Alas why hath death so false and dis- 
ceyuable, 


Mankinde to torment this will and liber- 
tie? 


It quencheth vertue, sparing iniquitie, 

The best it striketh, of bad hauing dis- 
dayne, 1000 

No helpe nor comfort hath our aduersi- 
tie, 

Death dayly striketh though dayly we 
complayne: 

To treate a tiran it is but thing in vayne, 

Mekenes prouoketh his wrath and tiran- 
ny, 

So at our prayer death hath the more 
disdayne, 1005 

We do by mekenes his furour multiply. 


If some fell tiran replete with villany 

Should thus haue ending the dede were 
commendable, 

But a stoute captayne disposed to mercy 

So soone thus faded, the case is lament- 
able, 1010 

Was he not humble, iocunde and compan- 
able, 

No man despising, and first in all labour, 

Right wise with mercy debonair and tret- 
able, 

Mate and companion with euery souldier. 


Vice he subdued by goodly behauour, 1015 
Like as a rider doth a wilde stede subdue, 
His body subiect, his soule was gouern- 


our, 

From vice withdrawen to goodnes and 
vertue, 

When pride rebelled mekenes did it es- 
chue, 


Free minde and almes subdued auarice: 

Alway he noted this saying iuste and 
true, 1021 

That noble mindes despised couetise. 


His death declareth that slouth he did 
despise, 

By hardie courage as fyrst in ieopardie, 

Alway he vsed some noble exercise, 1025 

Suche as belongeth to worthy chiualrie, 


AND ECLOGUE IV 330 


In him was there founde no sparkle of 
enuy, 

Alway he lauded and praysed worthynes, 

Suche as were doughtie rewarding large- 
ly, 

Wrath saue in season he wisely coulde 
repres. 1030 


Of wine or Bacchus despised he excesse, 

For mindes kindled to actes marciall, 

Seking for honour and name of doughti- 
nesse, 

Despiseth surfet and liuing bestiall, 

In him no power had luste venereall, 1035 

For busy labour and pleasaunt abstinence 

All corporall lust soone causeth for to 
fall, 

No lust subdueth where reigneth dili- 
gence. 


He was a piller of sober countenaunce, 
His onely treasour and iewell was good 


name, 1040 
But O cursed death thy wrathfull vio- 
lence, 
By stroke vnwarned halfe blinded of his 
fame, 


Whom may I accuse, whom may I put in 
blame, 
God for death, or fortune, or impotent 


nature, 
God doth his pleasour, and death will 
haue the same 1045 


Nature was mightie longe able to endure, 


In fortune is the fault nowe am I sure, 

I would if I durst his tiranny accuse: 

O cursed fortune if thou be creature, 
Who gaue thee power thus people to 


abuse, 1050 
Thy mutable might me causeth oft to 
muse, 


When man is plunged in dolour and dis- 
tresse, 

Thy face thou chaungest, which did earst 
refuse, 

By sodayne chaunces him lifting to rich- 
esse. 


And suche as longe time haue liued in 
noblenes 1055 

Anone suche plungest in payne and pouer- 
tie, 

Wealth, honour, strength, right, iustice 
and goodnes, 

Misery, dolour, lowe rowme, iniquitie, 


334 ALEXANDER BARCLAY 


These thou rewardest like as it pleaseth 
thee, 

To mans merite without respect at all, 

One this day being in great aucthori- 
tie, IO6r 

Agayne to morowe thou causest for to 
fall. 


When man is worthy a rowme imperiall, 
On him thou glowmest with frowarde 


countenaunce, 
Weake is thy promis reuoluing as a 
ball, 1065 
Thou hast no fauour to godly gouern- 
aunce, 


No man by merite thou vsest to aduaunce, 
O blinded fortune ofte time infortunate, 
When man thee trusteth then falleth some 


mischaunce, } 
Unwarely chaunging his fortune and es- 
tate. 1070 


Tell me frayle fortune, why did thou 
breuiate 

The liuing season of suche a captayne, 

That when his actes ought to be laureate 

Thy fauour turned him suffring to be 


slayne 

I blame thee fortune, and thee excuse 
agayne, 1075 

For though thy fauour to him was rigor- 
ous, 

Suche is thy custome for to be vncer- 
tayne, 

And namely when man is hye and glori- 
ous. 


But moste worthy duke hye and victori- 
ous, 

Respire to comfort, see the vncertentie 

Of other princes, whose fortune pros- 
perous TO8I 

Oftetime haue ended in harde aduersitie: 

Read of Pompeius whose pereles dignitie 

Agaynst great Cesar did wealth of Rome 
defende, 

Whom after fortune brought in captiui- 
tie, 1085 

And he in Egipt was headed at the ende. 


In likewise Cesar which did with him 


contende, 

When all the worlde to him was subiu- 
gate, 

From his hye honour did sodenly de- 
scende, 


Murdred in Rome by chaunce infortu- 
nate. I090 

Cato and Seneke, with Tully laureate, 

These and mo like for all their sapience 

Hath proued fortune, sore blinding their 
estate, 

By wrongfull slaunders and deadly vio- 
lence. 


To poore and riche it hath no difference, 

Olde Policrates supposing perill past, 1096 

With death dishonest ended his excel- 
lence, 

Great Alexander by fortune was downe 
cast, 

Bei draught of poyson him filled at the 
ast, 

Whom all the worlde earst could not 
saciate: II00 

What is all honour and power but a 
blast, 

When fortune threatneth the life to 
breuiate. 


Beholde on Pirrus the king infortunate 

With a small stone dead prostrate vpon 
the grounde, 

See Ualerian brought downe from his es- 
tate, II05 

From his empire in Percy thrall and 
bounde. 

Of olde Priamus it is in writing founde, 

Howe he by Pyrrus was in his palace 
slayne, 

Paris and Hector receyued mortall 
wounde, 

To trust in fortune it is a thing in 
vayne, IIIO 


The miightie Cyrus a king of Realmes 
twayne 

Was slayne and his hoste of Thomiris 
the quene. 

Thus is no matter of fortune to com- 
playne, 

All that nowe falleth of olde time hath 
bene sene, 

This shall be, this is, and this hath euer 
bene, IIIS 

That boldest heartes be nearest ieopardie, 

To dye in battayle is honour as men 
wene 

To suche as haue ioy in haunting chiu- 
alry. 


Suche famous ending the name doth 
magnifie, 


THE PROLOGUE 


Note worthy duke, no cause is to com- 
playne, 1120 
His life not ended foule nor dishonestly, 
In bed nor tauerne his lustes to mayn- 
teyne, 
But like as besemed a noble captayne, 
In sturdie harnes he died for the right, 
From deathes daunger no man may flee 
certayne, I125 
But suche death is metest vnto so noble a 
knight. 


But death it to call me thinke it vnright, 

Sith his worthy name shall laste per- 
petuall, 

To all his nation example and clere light, 

But to his progeny moste specially of 
all, 1130 

His soule is in pleasour of glory eternall, 

So duke most doughty ioy may that noble 
tree, 

Whose braunches honour shall neuer fade 
ne fall, 

While beast is on earth or fishes in the 
sea. 


Lo Codrus I here haue tolde thee by and 
by 1135 

Of shepheard Cornix the wofull elegy, 

Wherin he mourned the greeuous payne 
and harde, 

And laste departing of the noble lord 
Hawarde, 

More he indited of this good Admirall, 

But truely Codrus I can not tell thee 
all. 1140 


AND ECLOGUE IV 335 


Codrus 
Minalcas I sweare by holy Peters cope, 
If all thing fortune as I haue trust and 


hope, 

If happy winde blowe I shall or it be 
longe 

Comfort thy sorowe and well rewarde thy 
songe, 

What tary man a while till better fortune 
come, 1145 


If my part be any then shall thy part 
be some. 
Minalcas 
If thou in purpose so to rewarde my hire, 
God graunt thee Codrus thy wishing and 
desire. 
Codrus 
Forsooth Minalcas I wishe thee so in 
dede, 
And that shalt thou knowe if fortune 


with me spede, 1150 
Farewell Minalcas, for this time, dieu te 
garde, 


Neare is winter the worlde is to harde. 


Minalcas 
Go wretched nigarde, God sende thee 
care and payne, 
Our Lorde let thee neuer come hither 
more agayne, 
And as Midas, God turne it all to golde 
That euer thou touchest or shalt in 
handes holde, 1156 
For so muche on golde is fixed thy liking, 
That thou despiseth both vertue and cun- 
ninge. 


Thus endeth the fourth Egloge. 


JOHN SKELTON 


Our conclusions as to Skelton’s work are based on scarcely a fourth of what 
he wrote, if we take his own list in the Garland of Laurell as trustworthy. We 
have but one of his three or more dramatic pieces, no one of his larger didactic 
compositions, doubtful bits of his religious verse, none of his translations except 
an incomplete copy of the Diodorus Siculus. Much of the lighter verse which he 
describes with such gusto is unknown to us, and time has preserved only his 
“satire” in any amount. 

Nevertheless, we are on fairly safe ground in making our generalizations. 
The way in which Skelton distributes his emphasis in cataloguing his works shows 
us that he took satisfaction in his smartly colloquial and ribald writing; and of 
that type of his production we have numerous specimens. His lighter lyric, in- 
serted into the Garland of Laurell, he can hardly have bettered under any of the 
titles he there mentions; and his success in addressing a superior to whom he 
wishes to show respect, in that poem, causes us no regret at the loss of his verse 
written for royalty. We may, with Dyce, deplore the loss of the Ballad of the 

‘Mustard Tart and of the Mourning of the Mapely Root; but we can afford to 

lose the didactic, the monitory, the pompous Skelton, and we have material to 
recognize the roistering, abusive, voluble Skelton as clearly as if we possessed 
another volume filled with his How to Die, his advice to the Prince of Wales, 
and his attacks on Mistress Anne. 

John Skelton, born about 1460, was a Cambridge graduate, and early made 
a reputation for classical learning. In 1490 Caxton, writing a preface to his trans- 
lation of the Aeneid, begs Skelton’s criticism, praising his scholarship and men- 
tioning versions of Diodorus Siculus and of Cicero’s letters Ad Familiares as by 
him. Caxton also says that Skelton had lately been created poet laureate at Ox- 
ford; in 1493 Skelton received the same honor at Cambridge, and Robert Whitin- 
ton, maker of various grammars printed by de Worde, calls Skelton “Louaniensis” 
in a Latin eulogy printed by Dyce, i:xvi-xix. As the Cambridge record terms 
Skelton “poeta in partibus transmarinis atque Oxon. laurea ornatus”, we are 
tempted to believe that Skelton had indeed received the crown at Louvain; but 
the records of that University do not—or did not—chronicle the award. The 
‘laureate-rank, it may be observed, was much the same as our Litt. D. or LL. D.; 
‘it was held by other men of literary activity in Skelton’s time, e.g., by Whitinton 
and by Bernard André, the blind historiographer of Henry the Seventh. 

In 1498 Skelton took holy orders, passing rapidly through the three degrees 
in about as many months; this may have been that he might qualify for his duties 
as tutor to the young prince Henry. He was holding that post when Erasmus, 
in his ode De Laudibus Britanniae, of 1500, praised Skelton’s scholarship; and 
he had written, or soon wrote, various works for his royal patrons, which are 
not now known. He celebrated Prince Arthur’s creation as the Prince of Wales 
and Prince Henry’s elevation to the dukedom of York; he composed a Speculum 
Principis for his pupil (see the Garland, line 1202) ; and the translation mentioned 
in line 1194 of that poem was perhaps done for the mother of Henry the Seventh. 

Skelton’s tutorial duties seem to have been over by 1503, when we find him 
holding the rectory of Diss, in Norfolk, a post doubtless conferred on him as reward 


[ 336 ] 


JOHN SKELTON 337 


for his services at Court. This change of locale marks a definite change in his 
utterance. He had been academic, didactic, conventional; he had lamented the 
death of Northumberland, he had paid homage to royalty, he had translated the 
classics, using the accepted literary vocabulary and moulds. But there now ap- 
pears a difference in his thought and expression. Whether he resided for long 
periods at his new position or not, his withdrawal from Court seems to coincide with 
the appearance of the characteristic “Skeltonicall” metre and with the dominance 
of censure or satire in his verse. 

Between his earlier conventional work and the rapid, short-breathed verse 
into which Skelton now breaks, rimed in groups of three to six lines of usually 
three beats and carrying voluble, often coarse, description and abuse, there inter- 
venes a poem still in the orthodox seven-line stanza, but free in spirit,—the Bowge 
of Court. This poem should be compared with the Ship of Fools; it is the outcome 
of a general impulse of the time, an expression of that newly powerful bourgeois 
spirit which found its voice most easily in attack. The contrast between the adoles- 
cent awkwardness of method in the poem and the mature inherited form is more 
striking than that between the intent of Hawes or Barclay and their expression. Bar- 
clay’s stiffness and Hawes’ senility sink below the level of the stanza and are 
unable to fill it; Skelton seems to twist and struggle in the form, like a powerful 
unmannerly dog in harness. But with Philip Sparrow, written early in his tenure 
of Diss, and in the free couplet, Skelton passes over into his own province. 

He never again appears to such advantage, for more than a few lines, as in 
this light occasional poem, written to please a young girl, and lamenting for her, 
now in earnest, now with banter, now with teasing magniloquence, the death of her 
pet sparrow under the claws of the family cat. His later coarseness and virulence » 
are not here; his classical knowledge is lightly handled; and his extravagance of 
vocabulary, his fondness for jargon and word-puzzles, for heaped alliteration, for 
a medley of pothouse vulgarisms, proverbs, and Latinisms, has not yet obsessed 
him. We can see the indications of these traits; but they are under control. 

So far as we can judge from his extant work, Skelton must have settled 
conclusively into the smartly-crackling, quick-fire verse-movement used in Philip 
Sparrow. He took pride in it, notwithstanding the objections of formal versifiers 
like Barclay; he says, speaking as Colin Clout, that “though my ryme be ragged, 
tattered and jagged,—If ye take well therwith, It hath in it some pyth.” Certainly 
this loosely metred, indeterminate line-sequence gave Skelton greater freedom of 
movement than rime royal. But it also removed all bonds from a spirit reckless 
and restless; it permitted the noisy vehemence of Ware the Hauke, the Reply- 
cacion, the poem against the Scots; it permitted the wallowing coarseness of Ely- 
nour Rummyng; it permitted the snarling of the Wolsey-poems. When objurgation 
was made so easy, the impulse was speedily gratified. 

The verse-form found its imitators later; but Elizabethan and Stuart critics 
regarded it with disfavor. Puttenham called Skelton “a rude ragling rimer” ; 
Browne and Wither said his reed jarred; Drayton censured him. A period in 
which drama and criticism were considering form would not, indeed, value a 
man for whom the word was of so much more moment than was structure, for 
whom recurrence meant more than pattern. 

What the course of life was which threw off these poems, we do not know 
with certainty. Tradition says that Skelton as a rector “was more fit for the stage 
than for the pulpit”; anecdotes were long current of the irregularity of his life, 


338 JOHN SKELTON 


and vulgar jests were readily attributed to him. Some connection he had for a 
time with Wolsey, and this connection turned into enmity, which forced Skelton 
to take sanctuary at Westminster, where he died in 1529. How long he was there 
we do not know. He made visits in other counties than that of his benefice, as we 
learn from his own words; he was more than once the guest of the College of 
Bonshommes at Ashridge, Buckinghamshire, and he was entertained by the Coun- 
tess of Surrey at Sheriff Hutton Castle in Norfolk, writing there his Garland of 
Laurell. 

This poem, which of course postdates all the long list of Skelton’s writings 

‘enumerated in it, was printed in 1523, and is conjecturally assigned to 1520, when 

Skelton was about sixty years old. It is a composite in tone and in form, and is 
in some ways the most interesting of Skelton’s surviving works. Speaking in his 
‘own person, the poet narrates a dispute between Fame and Pallas, in the grand 
council of poets, as to Skelton’s right to the laurel; he describes the making of a 
‘garland for him by the Countess of Surrey and her ladies, and the joy of the 
assembled poets on beholding his coronal. Skelton obviously endeavored to ex- 
press himself here with a dignity and sobriety befitting the occasion ; and he there- 
fore resorted to the seven-line stanza for most of his poem. But he breaks into 
lyric as he turns from the Countess to her waiting-women, and at the mention of 
Philip Sparrow, in his catalogue of his own work, he whirls off again into the 
rattling short line. More than once, in the course of the poem, he is tempted down 
a bypath of personal rancor or of vulgar jocularity ; he drags himself back each 
time with an effort, but the difficulty with which he avoids the indecorous, the 
voluble, and the violent is quite plain. It is also plain how much more clearly 
he sees himself than he does his hostess; he lauds her in careful stanzas, but the 
full paean of praise he reserves for himself. As Dyce remarks, there is no second 
example in literature of a poet’s deliberately writing sixteen hundred lines in his 
own honor. 

Commenting on the Garland in this same passage (i:xlix), Dyce opines that 
the poem cannot be reckoned among Skelton’s best ; but, he adds, “it contains several 
passages of no mean beauty, which show that [Skelton] possessed powers for the 
higher kind of poetry, if he had chosen to exercise them; and [it] is interspersed 
with some lyrical addresses to the ladies who weave his chaplet, which are very 
happily versified.” Our emphasis would fall somewhat differently. These inserted 
lyrics appeal to us more than they did to Dyce; we hear in them a slender but true 
prelude to the full orchestration of the Elizabethan lyric, and we may feel all the 
more interest because of the machine-made setting in which they appear. “Prior 
himself,’ says Saintsbury, “has nothing more graceful and delicate.” 

We do not however feel justified, because of these few notes of lyric, in re- 
garding Skelton as a metrical genius. The racing short line which is most charac- 
-teristic of him is not a thing of beauty. Its source is uncertain. Schipper con- 
sidered that it arose from the dissolution of the Early English alliterative line, and 
Saintsbury seems to suggest that the frequent internal rime of long-line poems led 
to the use of short lines. Brie, in Englische Studien 37 :80, takes the view that 
Low Latin hymns, independently imitated in secular verse by French and by Eng- 
lish writers, popularized short lines such as those of Skelton; and the development 
of complex stanza and of lyrical line in West Europe strongly favors this sugges- 
tion. Such a hymn as that printed by Koenigsfeld, Lateinische Hymnen aus dem 
Mittelalter, 1847, pp. 238 ff., is illuminating :-— 


JOHN SKELTON 339 


Tandem audite me, 
Sionis filiae! 
Aegram respicite 
“Dilecto dicite 


Lines like these appear in the modern languages as well as in Latin. Lee, 
in his French Renaissance, pp. 194-5, cites from Skelton’s contemporary, Martial 
d’Auvergne ; and they had been employed by Trevisa, following Higden’s Latin as 
in the Polycronicon, i:394-7 of the Rolls Series edition. They can be found also 
in the Italian, e.g., of Guittone d’Arezzo. But in all these cases it is more a matter 
of line than of line-grouping in which the resemblance to Skelton consists. Rarely 
do the Latin, the French, the Italian, the earlier English, run other than in pairs; 
only in Martial d’Auvergne do we find the variation from two to four rimes in a 
sequence, or from two to three as in a hymn to St. Remigius printed by Mone in 
‘his Hymni Latini, iii:490-91. Skelton not only chooses the short line, he abandons 
‘the structural balance of lines. Whether he misunderstood the grouping of Latin 
lines or not is immaterial here ; the point is that even if we discover an example of 
‘such irregular line-grouping of earlier date, we shall expect to discover behind 
‘it a man of the same rebellious temperament as Skelton. For such a movement fits 
exactly what Skelton wished to say, and fits the style in which he said it. He was 
‘a man of coarse, vigorous, and restless fibre, of huge vanity, bad temper, and no 
self-control. With more command of himself, more learning, and a critical theory, 
he might have done work resembling that of Ben Jonson; as it was, he swung from 
~ enforced conventionality and pedantry to a series of outbursts personal and local. 
He has no outlook on life or on letters in the true sense. 

His style shows in the same way the lack of balance in his nature. He resorts 
to mystifications and to jargon as did the decadent grammarians of late Roman 
time, or as did a Gallic spirit restless as his, but finer than his,—Francois Villon. 
He pours out lists longer than those of Lydgate, whole catalogues of Greek myths 
-and Latin authors; and these he intermingles with homely proverbs and with col- 
-loquialisms. Everything is in excess; he cannot call Wolsey or Garnesche names 
without emptying the dictionary of thieves’ lingo ; and he hurls opprobrious epithets 
without pause or choice of weapon. Never is there in his work what Elton terms 
‘the “precision of insult” attained by the Roman or by the eighteenth-century Eng- 
lish satirist. Skelton aims not at clarity but at speed, not at form but at fluency; 
and the race of his metre, the rattle of his epithets and allusions, suit the narrowly 
personal and occasional character of his work. But that a temperament has run 
away with an intellect we may judge from his University honors, from the praise 
of Caxton and of Erasmus, and from a very few words of his own. It was no 
incompetent literary critic who said of Chaucer that “no word he wrote in vain”, 
and of Lydgate that “it is diffuse to find The sentence of his mind”. 

Like most occasional literature, Skelton’s production has been classed as 
‘satire. If satire be a criticism of life, an observer’s comment on the mistakes and 
the follies of mankind, it is obvious that the mood and the method of such comment 
‘will vary widely. Should the observing spirit be tolerant and even amused, cog- 
‘nizant always of its own kinship with humanity, we have the “satire” of Horace, 
‘of Chaucer, of Jane Austen. But if that spirit denounce, if by its angry derision 
‘it assert its superiority to humanity, the result is also called “satire”, but we have 
- Juvenal or Skelton. Moreover, beside this difference in mood, which our ter- 


340 JOHN SKELTON 


minology does not recognize, there may be divergence of method. Indirect satire 
uses the minimum of comment, and often appears best in narrative; while direct 
satire prefers that comment which passes so easily into the didactic or the vituper- 
ative. If direct didactic satire be written in a society which, like the medieval, is 
strictly grouped, criticism will be of types rather than of persons, and will pass 
easily into general invective, as in the Ship of Fools. If by force of personal cir- 
cumstances direct “satire” be aimed at an individual instead of a class, the result 
‘may become mere snarling, as in Skelton. Few are the men who can, like Chaucer, 
invest a class with individuality, and then hold the balance steady between censure 
and tolerance. Skelton was no such man, nor was Barclay. 

It was Skelton’s vain and violent temperament which led him to the intense 
personality of his criticisms. No happy man speaks with this voice, but a man 
dissatisfied with life’s verdict on him, turbulent under restraining circumstances, 
looking with unfriendly eye at his fellow-creatures. Twice, in all his existing 
work, does he depart from that tone,—when addressing a young girl in Philip 
Sparrow, and when paying his devoirs, a soothed and flattered guest, to a group 
of noble ladies. He is not there the Skelton of literary history, the author of the 
raucous violence of the Wolsey poems and of the deliberate squalor of Elynour 
Rummyng; but he is a Skelton whom the after-world values more. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SELECT REFERENCE LIST XVI 
Existing MS-copies of Skelton’s work are:— 

Against Garnesche. Brit. Mus. Harley 367. 

Colin Clout, and Speke, Parrot. Brit. Mus. Harley 2252. A fragm. of Colin is in Brit. 
Mus. Lansdowne 762. 

The Garland of Laurell. Brit.Mus.Cotton Vitellius E x (imperfect). 

The Lament for the Earl of Northumberland. Brit.Mus.Royal 18 D ii, a Percy MS. 

Manerly Margery. Brit.Mus.Adds. 5465, the “Fairfax MS”. 

To Mistress Anne. On the guard-leaf of Trin.Coll.Cambr. R. 3,17 (says Brie). 

Recule against Gaguyn. A few lines are perhaps preserved in Trin.Coll.Cambr. 
2,53. See Brie, EnglStud 37 :31-2. 

Rose both White and Rede. Exchequer Rolls B 2,8. Printed by Dyce as below, i 
after Preface. Printed by C. C. Stopes, Athenaeum 1914 i:625 as previously 
unpublished. Identified by Brie, EnglStud 37:49-50, with the “Boke of the 
Rosiar” in Skelton’s list; already queried by Dyce. 

The short poem entitled I, liber, et propera, see Corpus Christi Coll. Cambr. 432. 

The Latin hymn Salve plus decies; see Brit.Mus.Adds. 4787. 

Why Come Ye Nat to Court? frag. in Bodl. Rawlinson C 813; see Archiv 85 :429-36. 

Wofully Araid. Brit.Mus.Adds. 5465, and on the flyleaf of a 1496 print of Boethius; 
see Dyce i, page ci. In the Athenaeum 1873 ii:697 is publ. a text differing 
from Dyce’s. See Brie, loc.cit. 

The prose transl. of Diodorus Siculus, incomplete, is in Corpus Christi Coll. Cambr. 
357. It is to appear EETS. 

The Lament for Edward IV is in Brit. Mus. Harley 4011 and in Stow’s MS Brit. Mus. 
Adds. 29729. Authenticity questioned. 


Printed Editions. 
The first collected edition of Skelton’s works was issued by Thomas Marshe in 1568. 
Previously there had been printed :— 
Ballad of the Scottish King. Faukes, 1513. Discovered 1878, facsimile ed. by 
Ashton, London, 1882. 


JOHN SKELTON 341 


The Bowge of Court. de Worde, no date, twice. 
Colin Clout. By Kele, Wyght, Kitson, Veale, ?Godfray, no dates. 
Comely Coystroun. ?Pynson, no date. 
Garland of Laurell. Faukes, 1523. (Brit.Mus.) 
Magnifycence. ?Rastell, no date. (Univ.Libr.Cambr. Impf. in Brit. Mus.) 
Reprinted by the Roxburghe Club, 1821; a facsimile issued in Tudor Fac- 
similes, 1910. Ed. by Ramsay, diss., 1905, for EETS 1908. 
Philip Sparrow. By Kele. Toye, Wight, Kitson, Veale, Waley, no dates. 
Replycacyon. By Pynson, no date. 
Why Come Ye Nat to Court? By Kele, Wyght, Kitson, Veale, no dates. 
Pynson printed, no date, a four-leaf pamphlet of “ballads and ditties solacious”’ ; 
a larger collection was pubd. by Kynge and Marshe, no date, and reprinted 
by Day, by Lant. See Dyce. 
Later separate prints were :— 
Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng. 1624. (Bodleian, Huth) Repr. Harleian Mis- 
cellany, vol. i. 
Thomas Marshe’s Pithy Pleasaunt and Profitable Workes of Maister Skelton, Lon- 
don, 1568, was reprinted London, 1736. 
Skelton’s Works were printed in vol. ii of Chalmers’ British Poets; they were edited by 
the Rev. Alexander Dyce, London, 1843, 2 vols., still the standard edition. Dyce’s 
text and his introd. and notes, whole or part, were reprinted Cambridge, 1855, 
Boston, 1856, 1866, 1887. The fairly comprehensive selection ed. by Richard 
Hughes, London, 1924, uses Dyce’s text, but has no notes other than glosses to 
text. 
Selections, with a life by Sanford, Phila., 1819-23. 
In Southey’s Select Works of the British Poets, 1831, are Colin Clout, Philip Sparrow. 
In Skeat’s Specimens, vol. iii, Oxford, 1871 ff., are passages from Why Come Ye, 
Philip Sparrow. 
In Fliigel’s Neuengl. Lesebuch, Halle, 1895, are the Garland, lines 323 ff., Ware the 
Hauke, Why Come Ye, Philip Sparrow, etc. 
In Manly’s English Poetry 1170-1892 are bits of Philip Sparrow, Why Come Ye, 
Colin Clout. 
In Headlam’s Selections from British Satirists, London, 1897, are extracts from the 
Bowge of Court, Colin Clout, Speke Parrot. 

Selections from Skelton were ed. W. H. Williams, London, 1902, i. The Bowge of 
Court, Philip Sparrow, Why Come Ye, Colin Clout. Notes and glossary. 
Neilson and Webster, Chief British Poets, 1916, contains Philip Sparrow, Elynour 

Rummyng, Colin Clout, Garland of Laurel, Lullaby. (Spelling modernized.) 


On Skelton see :— 

Schoneberg, Die Sprache John Skeltons in seinen kleineren Werken. Marburg diss., 
1888, pp. 62. 

Rey, Skelton’s Satirical Poems in Relation to Lydgate’s Order of Fools, Cocke 
Lorell’s Bote, and Barclay’s Ship of Fools, Berne, 1899. 

Koelbing, Zur Charakteristik John Skelton’s, Stuttgart, 1904. 

Thiimmel, Studien tiber John Skelton, Leipzig, 1905. 

Brie, Skelton-Studien, in Englische Studien 37:1-81 (1906). 

Zwei verlorene Dichtungen von John Skelton, in Archiv 138:226-8 (1919). 

Bischoffsberger, Einfluss John Skelton’s auf die englische Literatur, Freiburg diss., 
1914, pp. 80. 

A. S. Cook, Skelton’s Garland of Laurel and Chaucer’s Hous of Fame, in MLReview 
11:9 (1916). 





342 JOHN SKELTON 


R. L. Dunbabin, Notes on Skelton, in MLReview 12:129 and 257 (1917). 
Berdan, The Poetry of Skelton, in Romanic Review 6:364. 








On the Dating of Skelton’s Satires, PMLA 29:499-516. 
“Speke Parrot.” An interpretation, in MLNotes 30:140-44, . 


Se Boyar, Skelton’s Replycacion, in PMLA 28 :244-45. 
Warton, History of English Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, 1871, iii :268-90. 


Berdan, Early Tudor Poetry, N. Y., 1920. 


Koelbing, in Cambr. History of English Literature, iii chap. 4. 
Herford, Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century, 


Cambridge, 1886. 


Saintsbury, English Prosody, i:235,240-45. 


Tucker, Verse Satire in England before the Renaissance, N. Y., 1908. 
On the play of Magnificence see The Library, series 3, vol. 4:393-408. 


[MS Brit. Mus. Cotton Vitellius E x] 


Arrectynge my Syght toward the Zodiak 
The signnys twelue for to beholde afar 
When Mars Retrogradant reuersid his 
bak 
Lorde of the yere in his Orbicular 
Put vp his sworde for he kowde make 
no war: 
And when Lucyna plenarly did shyne 
Scorpioune ascenddinge degrees twiys 
nyne 
2 


In place alone then musinge in my 
thowght 

How all thynge passithe as dothe the 
sommer floure 

On euery half my resons forthe I 
sowght 10 

‘How ofte fortune variythe in an howre 

Now clere wedder forthwithe a stormmy 
showre 

Al thynge compassid no perpetuyte 

Bot now in welthe now in aduersite 


3 
So depely drownnyd I was in this dumpe 
Encrampisshed so sore was my conceyte 
‘ That me to rest I lent me to a stumpe 17 
Of (an oke) that sumtyme grew ful 
streite 
A myghty tre and of a nobille heyghte 


The Cotton MS is on paper, of 242 leaves, imper- 
fect, damaged, and of miscellaneous content, none 
apparently early. The Libel of English Policy 
just precedes this poem, which has no heading. 
The Cottonian cataloguer of 1802 suggested that 
this “dialogue”, if by Skelton, was perhaps “* 
part of his ‘Crown of Glory.’ ” 

18. MS rubbed. Text supplied from Faukes’ 

1523 ed. 


a 


Whos bewte blastid was withe the boys- 
ters wynde 20 

His levis lost the sap was frome the 
rynde 


4 
Thus stode I in the fryththy forest of 
Galtres 
Ensowkid with sylt of the myry moose 
Where harttis belluynge embosid wt dis- 
tres 
Ran on the raunge / so longe: that I 


suppose 25 
ffew men can telle now where the hynde 
calf gose 


ffaire fall that foster that so kan bate his 
hownde 

Bot of my proces now turne we to the 
grownde: 


While I stode musinge in this medita- 
cioune 

In slumbrynge I fille and halfe in a 
slepe: 30 

And wheither it were of Imagynacioune 

Or of humors superflu that often wille 
krepe 

Into the brayne by drynkkynge ouer 
depe / 

Or it procedid of fatall persuasioune 

I kan not wele telle yow what was the 
occasioun 35 


Bot sodenly at onys as I me auysid 

As one in a traunce or in an extasy 

I saw a pauylioune wonderly disgisyd 

Garnnysshid freshe after my fantasy 

Enhachid with perle and stonys precious- 
ly 40 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 343 


The grounde engrosid and bet with burne 
gold 
That passinge goodely it was to behold 


eI fi 
Withe in it a prynces excellente of porte 
Bot to recounte her riche habilymente 


. And what astatis to her did resorte 45 


There to am I fulle insufficiente 

A goddes Immortall she did represent 

‘As I hard say Dame Pallas was her 
name 

To whome suppleyd the roiall quene of 
ffame: 


The quene of ffame to Dame Pallas 
Prynces mooste pusaunt of higth pre- 
hemynence 50 
Renowmmyd lady above the starry heven 
All other transcendinge of verey congru- 
ence 
Madame regent of the Scyence sevene 
To whose astate all nobilnes most lene 
My supplicacioune to yow I arrecte 55 
Where of I beseke yow to tender the ef- 
fect 
9 
Not vnremembred it is vnto your grace 
How ye yave me in roiall commaund- 
ment 
‘That in my cowrte Skelton shuld have a 
place 
By cause that his tyme he studiowsly 
_ hath spent 60 
In your seruyce: And to the accomplish- 
ment 
Of your request / regesterd is his name 
‘Withe Laureate Tryumphe in the courte 
of ffame 
10 
Bot goode madame the acustome and vs- 
age 
Of auncyent Poetis ye wote ful wele 
hathe bene 65 
Them self to enbissy withe all ther hole 
corage 
So that ther workkis myght famowsly be 
sene 
In figure where of they were the laurelle 
grene 
Bot how it is Skelton is wonder slak 
‘And as we dare we fynde in hym grete 
lak: 70 


11 

ffor ne were only he hathe your promo- 
cioune 

Owte of my bokis fulle sone I shulde hym 
race 

Bot sithe he hathe tastid of thensugerd 
pocioune 

Of Elyconys wel / reffreshid withe your 
grace 


| And wille not endeuoure hym self to pur- 


chace 75 
The fauor of ladys wt wordis electe 


It is fyttynge that ye most hym correcte: 


12 
Dame Pallas to the quene of ffame 
The sum of your purpose as we ar auysid 
Is for that our seruaunte is sumwhat to 
dulle: 
Where in this aunswere for hym we have 
comprisid 80 
How ryuers ryn not tille the sprynge be 
fulle 
Better a dum mowthe than a braynles 
skulle 
ffor if he gloriowsly pullishe his matter 
Then men wille say how he dothe bot 
flatter 
13 


And if hym fortune to wright trew & 
playne 85 

As sumtyme he mooste vicis remorde 

Then sum wille say he hathe bot litille 
brayne 

And how his worddis wt reson wille not 
corde 

Beware for writynge remaynnythe of 
recorde 

Displese not an hunderd for on mannys 
plesure 90 

Who writithe wisely hathe a grete tres- 
ure 

14 


‘Also to furnnyshe better his excuse 
-Ouyde was bannysshid for soche a skille 


And many mo whome I kowde enduse 


‘Juvenall was thret parde for to kylle 95 
.ffor pt he enveiyd: yit wrate he none 


Ille 
Savynge he rubbid sum on the gall 
It was not for hym to byde the tryall 


15 
In generall wordis I say not gretely nay 
A Poete sumtyme may for his plesure 
taunt I00 


344 JOHN SKELTON 


Spekynge in Parabols: how the fox the 
gray 

The gander the goose: and the huge 
Oliphaunt 

Went wt the pokok agayne the fesaunt 

The lesarde kam lepynge and said that 


he must 
Withe helpe of the ram ley all in the 
dust: 105 


16 
Yit dyuerse that be Industriows of reson 
Sumwhat wold gadder in ther coniecture 
Of soche an enderkkid chapiter sum 
seson 
How be it it were hard to constru this 


lecture 
Sophisticatid craftily is many a confec- 
ture 110 


Another mannys mynde diffuse is to ex- 
pound 


Yit harde is to make bot sum fawte be 


fownd 
17 

The Quene of ffame to Dame Pallas 
Madame wt fauour of your benygne suf- 

feraunce 
Vnto your grace then make I this motyve 
Whereto made ye me hym to avaunce 115 
Vnto the rowme of laureat promotyve 
Or where to shuld he have that preroga- 

tyve 
Bot if he had made sum memoriall 
Where by he myght have a name Im- 


mortall 
18 
To passe the tyme in slawthfulle Idyl- 
nes 120 


Of youre roiall palace it is not the gise 

Bot to do sumwhat eche man dothe hym 
dres 

ffor how shuld Cato els be callid wise 

Bot that his bokis whiche he did devise 

Recorde the same: or why is had in 
mynde 125 

Plato: bot for he laft wrytinge behynde 


19 
ffor men to loke on: Aristotille also 
Of Philosophers callid the pryncipall 
Olde Dyogenes wt other many mo 
Dymostenes that Oratour roiall 130 
Whiche yave Eschynes soche a cordiall 
That bannysshid was he by his proposi- 
cion 
Ageyne whome he kowde make no con- 
tradiccion 


20 
Dame Pallas to the quene of fame 
Softe goode my sister and make there a 
pause 
And was Eschynes rebukyd as ye say 135 
Remember yow wele: Poynte wele that 
clause 
Wherefore then rasid ye not away 
His name: Or why is it I yow pray 
That he to your courte is goynge and 
commynge 
Sithe he is sclaunderde for defaute of 
konynge 140 
21 
The quene of ffame to Dame Pallas 
Madame your opposelle is wele inferrid 
And at your auauntage quykly it is 
Towchid: And hard for to be debarrid 
Yit shall I awnswere your grace as in 
this 
Withe youre reformacioun if I say amys 
ffor bot if youre bownte did me assure 
Myne argument els kowd not longe en- 
dure 147 
22 
As towchinge that Eschynes is rememberd 
That he so shuld be me semythe it is 


syttynge 

All be it grete parte he hathe surren- 
dered 150 

Of his honour: whos dissuasyve in writ- 
ynge 

To korage Demostenes was moche ex- 
citynge 

In settinge owght freshely his crafty 
persuasioun 

ffrome whiche Eschynes had noone Eua- 
sioun 

23 

The cause why Demostenes so famowsly 

is brutyd 155 


Only procedid for that he did owtray 

Eschynes: whiche was not shamefully 
confutid 

Bot of that famows Orator I say 

Whiche passid all other: wherfor I may 

Amonge my recordis suffir hym namyd 

Sithe thowthe he were venquisshid yit 
was he not (shamyd) I6I 


24 
As Jerome in his preambille ffrater Am- 
brosius 


161. MS mutilated. Word supplied from 1523 ed. 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 345 


ffrome that I have saide in no poynte 
dothe vary 
Where he reporttithe of the coragiows 
Wordis: that were moche consolatory 165 
By Eschynes rehersid. to the grete glory 
Of Dymostenes that was his vtter fo 
ffew shall ye fynde or noone pt wille do 
so 
25 
Dame Pallas to the quene of ffame 
A thonke to have ye have wele deservyd 
Your mynde that kan mayntene so ap- 
parently 170 
Bot yit a grete parte ye have reservid 
Of that most folow then consequently 
Or els ye demene yow inordynatly 
ffor if ye laude hym whome honour hathe 


opprest 
Then he that dothe worst is as goode as 
the best } 175 


26 
But whome that ye fauour I se wele 
hathe a name 
Be he neuer so litille of substance 
And whome ye love not ye wold put to 


shame 

Ye counterway not euynly youre bal- 
aunce 

As wele foly as wisdome ofte tyme ye 
auaunce 180 


Reporte risithe many dyuerse waiys 

‘Sum be moche spoken of for makinge of 
fraiys 

27 

Sum have a name for thefte and brybery 

Sum be callid crafty that kan kit a purse 

Sum men be made of for ther mokery 185 

Sum karefulle kokolddis sum have ther 
wyvis kurse 

Sum famows wetewolddis and they be 
moche wurse 

Sum liddurns sum losellis sum nowghtty 
pakkis 

Sum facers sum bracers and sum make 
grete krakkis 


28 
Sum drunken dastarddis wt ther dry 
sowllis 190 
Sume sluggishe slouens that slepe day & 


nyght 

Ryote and reuelle be in your courte rollis 

Mayntenans and myscheif theis be men 
of myght 

Extorcioun is kounttid withe yow for a 
knyght 


Theis pepille by me have noone assigne- 
ment 195 

Yit ryde they and ryn they from karlyle 
to kente 


29 
Bot litille or no thynge shall ye here telle 
Of them that have vertu by reson of 
konyng 
Whiche souereynly in honor shuld ex- 
celle 
Men of soche maters make bot a mum- 


myng 200 
ffor wisdom and sadnes be set owte a 
sunnyng 
And soche of my seruaunttis as I have 
promotid 


One fawte or other in them shall be notid 


30 

Eyther they shall say he is to wise 

Or els he kan nowght bot when he is at 
skole 205 

Prove his wit saithe he at karddis or dise 

And ye shall fynde wele he is a verrey 
fole 

Twishe / set hym a chayre or reche hym 
a stole 

To syt vpon / and rede Jak Athrvmmys 
bibille 

ffor truly it were pyte that he sat 
ydyll 210 


31 
The quene of ffame to Dame Pallas 
To make repugnaunce ageyne pt ye have 
said 
Of verey dewte it may not wele acorde 
Bot your benynge sufferaunce for my dis- 
charge I laid 
ffor that I wold not withe yow fall at 
discorde 
Bot yit I beseke your grace that recorde 
May be browght forthe soche as kan be 
fownde 216 
Withe laureate tryymphe why Skelton 
shuld be krownd 


32 
ffor els were to grete a derogacioun 
Vnto your palace oure nobille courte of 
ffame 
That any man vnder supportacioun 220 
Withe owght deservynge shuld have the 
best game: 
If he to the ampille encrese of his name 


346 JOHN SKELTON 


Can ley any workkis that he hathe com- 


pilyd 
I am contente that he be not exilid 
33 
ffrom the laureate Senate: by force of 
proscripcioun 225 


Or els ye know wele I kan do no les 
Bot I most bannyshe hym frome my 
Turisdiccioun 
As he that aquayntithe hym wt Idelnes 
Bot yf that he purpose to make a redres 
What he hathe done let it be browght 
to sight 230 
Graunte my peticioun I aske yow bot 
right 
34 
Dame Pallas to the quene of ffame 
‘To your request we be wele condiscendid 
Calle forthe let se where is your claryon- 
ar 
To blow a blast withe his longe brethe 
extendid 
Eolus your trumpet whiche knowen is so 
far 235 
That Bararag blowithe in euery marciall 
war 
Let hym blow now that we may take the 
vew 
What Poetis we have at oure retenew 


oo 
To se if Skelton dare put him self in 
prees 
Amonge the thikkest of all the hole 
rowghte 240 
Make noyce Inowthe for claterars love no 
pece 
Let se my sister now spede go abowght 
Anon I say this trumpet were fownd oute 
And for no man hardly let hym spare 
To blow bararag brag til bothe his yen 
stare 245 


[Vitellius MS mutilated. Text below from 
the Faukes print of 1523.] 


36 
Forth with there rose amonge the thronge 
A wonderfull noyse / and on euery syde 
They presid in faste / some thought they 
were to longe 
Sume were to hasty & wold no man byde 
Some whispred some rownyd / some 
spake / & some cryde 250 
With heuynge and shouynge haue in and 
haue oute 


Some ranne the nexte way sume ranne 
abowte 
37 
~ There was suyng to the quene of fame 
He plucked hym backe / and he went a 


fore 

Nay hold thy tunge quod a nother let me 
haue the name 255 

Make rowme sayd a nother ye prese all 
to sore 

Sume sayd holde thy peas thou getest here 
no more 

A thowsande thowsande I sawe on a 
plumpe 

With that I harde the noyse of a trumpe 

38 

That longe tyme blewe a full timorous 
blaste 260 

Lyke to the boryall wyndes whan they 
blowe 


That towres / and townes / and trees 
downe caste 

Droue clowdes together lyke dryftis of 
snowe 

The dredefull dinne droue all the rowte 
on a rowe 

Some tremblid / some girnid / some 
gaspid / some gasid 265 

As people halfe peuysshe or men that 
were masyd 

39 

Anone all was whyste as it were for the 
nonys 

And iche man stode gasyng & staryng 
vpon other 

With that there come in wonderly at ones 

A murmur of mynstrels / that suche a 


nother 270 
Had I neuer sene some softer some 
lowder 


Orpheus the traciane herped meledyously 
Weth Amphion and other musis of ar- 
chady 
40 
Whos heuenly armony was so passynge 
sure 
So truely proporsionyd and so well did 
gree 275 
So duly entunyd with euery mesure 
That in the forest was none so great a 
tre 
But that he daunced for ioye of that gle 
The huge myghty okes them selfe dyd 
auaunce 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 347 


And lepe frome the hylles to lerne for to 


daunce 280 
41 
In so moche the stumpe where to I me 
lente 


Sterte all at ones an hundrethe fote backe 
| With that I sprange vp towarde the tent 
Of noble dame Pallas wherof I spake 
Where I sawe come after I wote full 


lytyll lake 285 
' Of a thousande poetes assembled to 
geder 


But phebus was formest of all that cam 
theder 


‘Of laurell leuis a cronell on his hede 
With heres enscrisped yalowe as the 


golde 
Lamentyng daphnes whome with the darte 
of lede 290 


Cupyde hath stryken so that she ne wolde 

Concente to phebus to haue his herte in 
holde 

But for to preserue her maiden hode 


clene 

Transformyd was she in to the laurell 
grene 

43 

Meddelyd with murnynge the moost parte 
of his muse 295 

O thoughtfull herte was euermore his 
songe 

Daphnes my derlynge why do you me 
refuse 


Yet loke on me that louyd you haue so 
longe 
Yet haue compassyon vpon my paynes 


stronge 
He sange also how the tre as he did 
take 300 


Betwene his armes he felt her body quake 


Then he assurded into his exclamacyon 

Unto Diana the goddes inmortall 

O mercyles madame hard is your con- 
stellacyon 

So close to kepe your cloyster virgynall 

Enhardid adyment the sement of your 
wall 306 

Alas what ayle you to be so ouerthwhart 

To bannysshe pyte out of a maydens harte 


302. this exclamacyon Marshe. 


45 
Why haue the goddes shewyd me this 
cruelte 
Sith I contryuyd first princyples medy- 
cynable 310 
I helpe all other of there infirmite 


But now to helpe my selfe I am not able 


That profyteth all other is no thynge 
profytable 

Unto me / alas that herbe nor gras 

The feruent axes of loue can not re- 
presse 315 

46 

O fatall fortune what haue I offendid 

Odious disdayne why raist bu me on this 
facyon 

But sith I haue lost now that I entended 

And may not atteyne it by no medyacyon 

Yet in ‘remembraunce of daph(n)es 
transformacyon 320 

All famous poetis ensuynge after me 

Shall were a garlande of the laurell tre 


47 

This sayd a great nowmber folowyd by 
and by 

Of poetis laureat of many dyuerse na- 
cyons 

Parte of there names I thynke to spece- 
fye 325 

Fyrste olde Quintiliane wt his declyna- 
cyons 

Theocritus with his bucolycall relacyons 

Esiodus the Icononucar 

And homerus the ffresshe historiar 


48 
Prynce of eloquence tullius cicero 330 
With salusty ageinst lucius catelyne 
That wrote the history of iugurta also 
Ouyde enshryned with the musis nyne 
But blesses Bacchus the pleasant god of 
wyne 
Of clusters engrosyd with his ruddy 
droppes 335 
These orators and poetes refresshed there 
throtis 
49 
Lucan with stacius in Achilliedos 
Percius presed forth with problemes 
diffuse 
Uirgill the mantuan with his eneidos 
Juuenall satirray that men makythe to 
muse 340 


Stanza 49 is from Marshe; not in Faukes. 


348 JOHN SKELTON 


But blessed Bacchus the pleasant god of 
wyne 

Of clusters engrosed with his ruddy 
flotes 

These orators & Poetes refreshed their 
throtes 


50 

There titus lyuius hym selfe dyd auaunce 

With decadis historious whiche that he 
mengith 345 

With maters that amount the romayns in 
substaunce 

Enyus that wrate of mercyall war at 
lengthe 

But blessed bachus potenciall god of 
strengthe 

Of clusters engrosid wt his ruddy droppes 

Theis orators and poetis refreshed there 
throtis 350 


51 
Aulus Gelius that noble historiar 
Orace also with his new poetry 
Mayster Terence the famous comicar 
With plautus that wrote full many a 
comedy 
But blessed bachus was in there company 
Of clusters engrosyd with his ruddy 
dropis 
Theis orators and poetis refresshed there 
throtis 


52 
Senek full soberly wt his tragedijs 
Boyce recounfortyd with his philosophy 
And maxymyane with his madde di- 
tijs 360 
How dotynge age wold iape with yonge 
foly 
But blessyd bachus most reuerent and 
holy 
Of clusters engrosid with his ruddy dropis 
Theis orators and poetis refresshed there 
throtis 


53 

There came John bochas wt his vol- 
umys grete 365 

Quintus cursus full craftely that wrate 

Of alexander / and macrobius that did 
trete 

Of scipions dreme what was the treu 
probate 

But blessyd bachus that neuer man for- 
gate 


353. Faukes conucar. 


Of clusters engrosed with his ruddy 
dropis 370 
These orators and poetis refresshid ther 
throtis 
54 
Poggeus also that famous florentine 
Mustred ther amonge them with many a 
mad tale 
With a frere of fraunce men call sir 


gagwyne 375 
That frownyd on me full angerly and 
pale 


But blessyd bachus that bote is of all 
bale 

Of clusters engrosyd with his ruddy 
dropis 

Theis orators and poetis refresshid there 
throtis 

55 

Plutarke and Petrarke two famous clark- 
is 380 

Lucilius and valerius maximus by name 

With vincencius in speculo pt wrote noble 


warkis 

Propercius and Pisandros poetis of noble 
fame 

But blissed bachus that mastris oft doth 
frame 

Of clusters engrosed with his ruddy 
dropis 

Theis notable poetis refresshed there 
throtis 385 


56 

And as I thus sadly amonge them auysid 

I saw Gower that first garnisshed our 
englysshe rude 

And maister Chaucer that nobly enter- 
prysyd “ae 

How that our englysshe myght fresshely 
be (ennewed) 

The monke of Bury then after them en- 
suyd 390 

Dane John Lydgate theis englysshe poetis 
thre ; 

As I ymagenyd repayrid vnto me 


57 


To geder in armes as brethern enbrasid 

There apparell farre passynge beyonde 
that I can tell 

Wt diamauntis and rubis there taber- 
(de)s were trasid 395 


389. Faukes reads amende. Word from Marshe. 
395. Reading amended from Marshe. 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 


None so ryche stones in turkey to sell 
Thei wantid nothynge but the laurell 
And of there bounte they made me godely 
chere 
In maner and forme as ye shall after 
here 
58 


Mayster Gower. To Skelton. 
Brother Skelton your endeuorment 400 
So haue ye done that meretoryously 
‘Ye haue deseruyd to haue an enplement 
In our collage aboue the sterry sky 

By cause that (ye) encrese and amplyfy 
The brutid britons of brutus albion 405 
‘That welny was loste when that we were 
gone 
59 

Poeta Skelton to Maister Gower. 
Maister Gower I haue nothyng deserued 
‘To haue So laudabyle A commendacion 
To yow thre this honor shalbe reserued 
Arrectinge vnto your wyse examina- 

cion 410 
-How all that I do is vnder Refformation 
.For only the Substance of that I entend 
‘Is glad to please and loth to offend 


60 
Mayster Gower. To Skelton. 

Counterwayng your besy delygence 
Of that we beganne in the supplement 475 
Enforcid ar we you to recompence 
Of all our hooll collage by the agrea- 

ment 
‘That we shall brynge you personally 

present 
Of noble fame before the quenes grace 
‘In whose court poynted is your place 420 


61 

Poeta Ske(l)ton answeryth. 

~O noble Chaucer whos pullisshyd elo- 

quence 

» Oure englysshe rude so fresshely hath set 
out 

That bounde ar we with all deu reuerence 

Wt all our strength that we can brynge 
about 

To owe to you our seruyce / & more if 
we mowte 425 

But what sholde I say ye wote what I 
entende 

Whiche glad am to please and loth to 
offende 


404. Word supplied from Marshe. Stanza 59 is 


from Marshe: not in Faukes. 


349 


62 
Mayster Lydgate. To Skelton. 
So am I preuentid of my brethern tweyne 
In rendrynge to you thankkes meritory 
That welny no thynge there doth re- 
mayne 430 
Wherwt to geue you my regraciatory 
But that I poynt you to be prothonatory 
Of fames court by all our holl assent 
Auaunced by pallas to laurell prefer- 
ment 
63 
Poeta Skelton answeryth 


VSo haue ye me far passynge my meretis 


extollyd 435 
Mayster lidgate of your accustomable 
Bownte / and so gloryously ye haue en- 

rollyd 
My name / I know well beyonde that I 

am able 
That but if my warkes therto be agreable 
I am elles rebukyd of that I intende 440 
Which glad am to please and lothe to 
offende 
64 
So finally when they had shewed there 
deuyse 
Under the forme as I sayd to fore 
I made it straunge & drew bak ones or 


twyse 
And euer they presed on me more and 
more 445 


Tyll at the last they forcyd me sore 

That wt them I went where they wolde 
me brynge 

Unto the pauylyon where pallas was syt- 
tyng 


65 

Dame Pallas commaundid pt they shold 
me conuay 

Into the ryche palace of be quene of 
fame 450 

There shal he here what she wyl to hym 
say 

When he is callid to answere to his 
name 


A cry anone forthwt she made proclame 


‘All orators and poetis shulde thider go 


before 
With all the prese that there was lesse 
and more 455 


66 
Forth wt I say thus wa(n)drynge in my 
thought 


350 JOHN SKELTON 


How it was or elles wt in what howris 

I can not tell you / but that I was 
brought 

In to a palace wt turrettis and towris 

Engalared goodly with hallis and bow- 
ris 460 

So curiously / so craftely / so connyng- 
ly wrowght 

That all the wor(1)de I trowe and it 
were sought 


67 
Suche a nother there coude no man fynde 
Wher of partely I purpose to expounde 
Whyles it remanyth fresshe in my 
mynde 465 
Wt turkis and grossolitis enpauyd was 
the grounde 
Of birrall enbosid wer the pyllers rownde 
Of Elephantis tethe were the palace gatis 
Enlosenged with many goodly platis 


68 
Of golde entachid with many a precyous 
stone 470 
An hundred steppis mountyng to the 
halle 
One of iasper a nother of whalis bone 
Of dyamauntis pointed was the wall 
The carpettis within and tappettis of 
pall 
The chambres hangid with clothis of 
arace 475 
Enuawtyd wt rubis the vawte was of this 
place 


69 
Thus passid we forth walkynge vnto the 
pretory 
Where pe postis were enbulyoned wt 
saphiris indy blew 
Englasid glittering wt many a clere story 
Jacinctis and smaragdis out of the florthe 
they grew 480 
Unto this place all poetis there did sue 
Wherin was set of fame the noble quene 
All other transcendynge most rychely be- 
sene 
70 
Under a gloryous cloth of astate 
Fret all with orient perlys of garnate 485 
Encrownyd as empresse of all this 
wor(1)dly fate 
So ryally / so rychely / so passyngly 
ornate 


460. Engolerid Faukes: reading from Marshe. 


It was excedyng by yonde the com- 
mowne rate 

This hous enuyrowne was a myle a bout 

If . xij . were let in . xij . hundrethe stode 
without 490 


71 

Then to this lady & souerayne of this 
palace 

Of purseuantis ther presid in wt many a 
dyuerse tale 

Some were of poyle & sum were of trace 

Of lymerik / of loreine / of spayne of 
portyngale 

Frome napuls / from nauern & from 
rounceuall 495 

Some from flaunders / sum fro the se 
coste 

Some from the mayne lande / some fro 
the frensche hoste 


72 

With how doth be north what tydingis 
is in pe sowth 

The west is wyndy / the est is metely 
wele 

It is harde to tell of euery mannes 
mouthe 500 

A slipper holde the taile is of an ele 

And he haltith often that hath a kyby 
hele 

Some shewed his salfe cundight some 
shewid his charter 

Some lokyd ful smothely and had a fals 
quarter 


73 

With sir I pray you a lytyll tyne stande 
backe 505 

And lette me come in to delyuer my lettre 

A nother tolde how shyppes wente to 
wrak 

There were many wordes smaller and 
gretter 

With I as good as thou / I fayth and no 
better 

Some came to tell treuth / some came to 
lye 510 

Some come to flater / some came to spye 


74 
There were I say / of all maner of sortis 
Of dertmouth / of plummouth / of por- 
tismouth also 
The burgeis / and the ballyuis of the.v. 
portis 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 351 


With now let me come / and now let me 

go 515 
And all tyme wandred I thus to and fro 
Tyll at the last theis noble poetis thre 
Unto me sayd / lo syr now ye may se 


75 
Of this high courte the dayly besines 
From you most we but not longe to 
tary 520 
Lo hither commyth a goodly maystres 
Occupacyon famys regestary 
Whiche shall be to you a sufferayne ac- 


cessary 

With syngular pleasurs to dryue away 
the tyme 

And we shall se you ageyne or it be 
pryme 525 

76 

When they were past & wente forth on 
there way 

This gentilwoman that callyd was by 
name 


Occupacyon in ryght goodly aray 
Came towarde me and smylid halfe in 


game 
I sawe hir smyle and I then did the 
same 530 


With that on me she kest her goodly loke 
Under her arme me thought she hade a 
boke 


77 
Occupacyoun to Skelton. 
Lyke as the larke vpon the somers day 
Whan titan radiant burnisshith his bemis 
bryght 
Mountith on hy wt her melodious lay 535 
Of the sone shyne engladid with the 
lyght 
So am I supprysd wt pleasure and de- 
lyght 
_To se this howre now that I may say 
~ How ye are welcome to this court of 


aray 
78 

Of your aqueintaunce I was in tymes 
past 540 

Of studyous doctryne when at the port 
salu 

(Ye) fyrste aryuyd whan broken was 
your mast 


Of worldly trust then did I you rescu 
542. Faukes The. 


Your storme dryuen shyppe I repared 
new 
So well entakeled what wynde that euer 
blowe 5 
No stormy tempeste your barge shall ouer 
throw 
79 


Welcome to me as hertely as herte can 
thynke 

Welcome to me with all my hole desyre 

And for my sake spare neyther pen nor 


ynke 
Be well assurid I shall a quyte your 
hyre 550 


Your name recountynge be yonde the 
lands of tyre 

From sydony to the mount olympyan 

Frome babill towre to the hillis Gaspian 


80 
Skelton poeta answeryth 
I thanked her moche of her most noble 
offer 554 
Affyaunsynge her myne hole assuraunce 
For her pleasure to make a large profer 
Enpryntyng her wordes in my remem- 
braunce 
To owe her my seruyce wt true perseuer- 
aunce 
Come on with me she sayd let vs not 


stonde 

And with that worde she toke me by the 
honde 560 

81 

So passyd we forthe in to the forsayd 
place 

With suche communycacyon as came to 
our mynde 


And then she sayd whylis we haue tyme 
and space 

To walke where we lyst / let vs som- 
what fynde 

To pas be tyme with / but let vs wast no 
wynde 505 

For ydle iangelers haue but lytill braine 

Wordes be swordes and hard to call 
ageine 

82 


/In to a felde she brought me wyde and 


large 
Enwallyd aboute with the stony flint 
Strongly enbateld moche costious of 
charge 570 
To walke on this walle she bed I sholde 
not stint 


352 JOHN SKELTON | 


Go softly she sayd the stones be full 
glint 

She went before and bad me take good 
holde 

I sawe a thowsande yatis new and olde 


83 

Then questionyd I her what thos yatis 
ment 575 

Wherto she answeryd and breuely me 
tolde 

How from the est vnto the occident 

And from pe sowth vnto the north so 
colde 

Theis yatis she sayd which that ye be- 
holde 

Be issuis and portis from all maner of 
nacyons 580 

And seryously she shewyd me ther de- 
nominacyons 

84 

They had wrytyng sum greke / sum 
ebrew 

Some romaine letters as I vnderstode 

Some were olde wryten / sum were 
writen new 

Some carectis of caldy / sum frensshe 
was full good 585 

But one gate specyally where as I stode 

Had grauin in it of calcydony a capytall 
A 


What yate call ye this / and she sayd 
Anglea 


85 
The beldyng therof was passynge com- 
mendable 
Wheron stode a lybbard crownyd wt 


golde and stones 590 
Terrible of countenaunce and passynge 
formydable 


As quikly towchyd as it were flesshe and 
bones 
As gastly that glaris as grimly that 


gronis 

As fersly frownynge as he had ben 
fyghtyng 

And with his forme foote he shoke 
forthe this wrytyng 595 


Cacosinthicon ex industria 
Formidanda nimis Iouis vltima fulmina 
tollis 
Vnguibus ire parat loca singula liuida 
curuis 


Quam modo per phebes Nummos raptura 
celeno 

Arma / lues / luctus / fel / vis / fraus 
barbara tellus 

Mille modis erras odium tibi querere 
martis 

Spreto spineto cedat saliunca roseto 


86 
Then I me lent and loked ouer the wall 
Innumerable people presed to euery gate 
Shet were be gatis thei might wel knock 
& cal 
noe turne home ageyne for they cam al to 
ate 
I her demaunded of them and ther as- 
tate 600 
Forsothe quod she theys be hastardis and 
rebawdis 
Dysers / carders / tumblars with gam- 
bawdis 
87 


Furdrers of loue with bawdry aqueinted 

Brainles blenkardis that blow at the cole 

Fals forgers of mony for (coynnage) 
atteintid 605 

Pope holy ypocrytis as they were golde & 
hole 

Powle hatchettis pt prate wyll at euery 
ale pole 

Ryot / reueler / railer / brybery theft 

Wt other condycyons that well myght 
be left 


Sume fayne them selfe folys & wolde 
be callyd wyse 610 

Sum medelynge spyes by craft to grope 
thy mynde 

Sume dysdanous dawcokkis bt all men 
dispyse 

Fals flaterers that fawne the & kurris of 
kynde 

That speke fayre before the & shrewdly 
behynde 

Hither they come crowdyng to get them 
a name 

But hailid they be homwarde wt sorow 
and shame 

89 

With that I herd gunnis russhe out at 
ones 

Bowns / bowns / bowns / that all they 
out cryde 


605. Bracketed word from Marshe: Faukes kown- 


nage. 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 353 


It made sum lympe legged & broisid 
there bones 

Sum were made peuysshe porisshly pynk 
iyde 620 

That euer more after by it they were 
aspyid 

And one ther was there I wondred of his 
hap 

For a gun stone I say had all to iaggid 
his cap 

90 
Raggid and daggid and cunnyngly cut 
The blaste of be byrnston blew away his 


brayne 625 

Masid as a marche hare he ran lyke a 
scut 

And sir amonge all me thought I saw 
twaine 

The one was a tumblar pt afterwarde 
againe 

Of a dysour a deuyl way grew a Jentil- 
man 

Pers prater the secund tha(t) quarillis 
beganne 630 

91 


Wt a pellit of peuisshenes they had such 
a stroke 

That all be dayes of ther lyfe shall styck 
by ther rybbis 

Foo / foisty bawdias sum smellid of the 
smoke 

I saw dyuers pt were carijd away thens 
in cribbis 

Dasyng after dotrellis lyke drunkardis pt 
dribbis 635 

Theis titiuyllis wt taumpinnis wer 
towchid & tappid 

Moche mischefe I hyght you / amonge 
theme ther happid 


92 
Sometyme as it semyth when be mone 
light 
By meanys of a grosely endarkyd clowde 
Sodenly is eclipsid in the wynter night 
In lyke maner of wyse a myst did vs 


shrowde 641 
But wele may ye thynk I was no thyng 
prowde 
Of that auenturis whiche made me sore 
; agast 
In derkenes thus dwelt we tyll at the last 
93 
The clowdis gan to clere / be myst was 
rarifijd 645 


~In an herber I saw brought where I was 


There birdis on the brere sange on euery 
syde 

With alys ensandid about in compas 

The bankis enturfid with singular solas 

Enrailid with rosers and vinis engrapid 

It was a new comfort of sorowis escapid 


94 

In the middis a coundight that coryously 
was cast 

With pypes of golde engusshing out 
stremes 

Of cristall the clerenes theis waters far 
past 

Enswymmyng wt rochis / barbellis / and 
bremis 655 

Whose skales ensiluered again the son 
beames 


Englistered: bt ioyous it was to be holde 
Then furthermore aboute me my syght 
I reuolde 
95 


Where I saw growyng a goodly laurell tre 

Enuerdurid with leuis contynually grene 

Aboue in the top a byrde of araby 661 

Men call a phenix: her wynges bytwene 

She bet vp a fyre with the sparkis full 
kene 

With braunches and bowghis of be swete 


olyue 
Whos flagraunt flower was chefe pre- 
seruatyue 665 


96 
Ageynst all infeccyons with (r)ancour 
enflamyd 
Ageynst all baratows broisiours of olde 
It passid all bawmys that euer were 
namyd 
Or gummis of saby so derely that be solde 
There blew in that gardynge a soft pip- 


lyng colde 670 
Enbrethyng of zepherus wt his pleasant 
wynde 


All frutis (&) flowris grew there in there 
kynde 
97 


‘ Dryades there daunsid vpon that goodly 


soile 
Wit(h) the nyne muses pierides by name 
Phillis and testalus ther tressis with 
oyle 675 
Were newly enbybid: and rownd about 
the same 


656. This line from Marshe; omitted by Faukes. 


354 


Grene tre of laurell moche solacyous game 

They made / with chapellettes and gar- 
landes grene 

And formest of all dame flora the quene 


98 
Of somer: so formally she fotid the 
daunce 680 
There cintheus sat twynklyng vpon his 
harpe stringis 
And iopas his instrument did auaunce 
The poemis and storis auncient in bryngis 
Of athlas astrology and many noble 
thyngis 
Of wandryng of the mone / the course 
of the sun 685 
Of men and of bestis and where of they 
begone 


99 
What thynge occasionyd the showris of 
rayne 
Oi fyre elementar in his supreme spere 
And of that pole artike whiche doth 
remayne 
Behynde the taile of vrsa so clere 690 
Of pliades he prechid wt ther drowsy 
chere 
Immoysturid wt mistyng and ay droppyng 
dry 
And where the two tr(i)ons a man shold 
aspy 
100 
ue of be winter days that hy them so 
ast 
And of the wynter nyghtes that tary so 
longe 695 
aa of the somer days so longe that doth 
ast 
And of their shorte nyghtes / he browght 
in his songe 
How wronge was no ryght / and ryght 
was no wronge 
There was counteryng of carollis in meter 
and verse 
So many : that longe it were to re- 
herse 700 
101 
Occupacyon. To Skelton. 
How say ye: is this after your appetite 
May this contente you & your mirry 
mynde 
Here dwellith pleasure wt lust & delyte 
Contynuall comfort here ye may fynde 
Of welth & solace no thynge left be 
hynde 705 


JOHN SKELTON 


All thynge conuenable here is contryuyd 
Where with your spiritis may be reuyuid 


102 
Poeta Skelton answeryth 
Questionles no dowte of that ye say 
Jupiter hym selfe this lyfe myght endure 
This ioy excedith all wor(1)dly sport & 


play 710 
Paradyce / this place is of syngular 
pleasure 
O wele were hym that herof myght be 
sure 


And here to inhabite / and ay for to 
dwell 

But goodly maystres one thynge ye me 
tell 


[Text following is from MS Cotton Vitel- 
lius E x] 
103 
[Occupacyon. To Skelton.] 
Of your demaunde shew me the content 
What it is and where vpon it standdis 
And if there be in it any thynge ment 
Where of the awnswere restithe in myne 
handdis 
It shall be losond fulle sone owte of the 
banddis 
Of skrupulows dought: wherefor your 
mynde discharge 720 
And of your wille the playnnes shew at 
large 


104 
Poeta Skelton to Occupacioun 
I thanke yow goodely mastres to me moost 
benygne 
That of your bownte so wele have me 
assuryd 
Bot my request is not so grete a thynge 
That I ne force what thowthe it be dis- 


curyd 725 
I am not woundid but that I may be 
kuryd 


I am not ladyn of liddernes withe lumpis 
As dasid dotarddis that dreme in ther 
dumppis 
105 
Occupacioun to Skelton 
Now what ye mene I trow I coniecte 
God geve yow goode yere ye make me 
to smyle 730 
Now by yowre faythe is not this the 
effecte 


Heading to Stanza 103 from Faukes. 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 355 


Of yowre questioun ye make all this 
whyle 

To vnderstande who dwellythe in yonder 
pyle 

And ee blunderar is yonder that plaiyth 
diddil diddil 

He fyndithe owght fals mesuris of his 
fond fyddille 735 


Interpolata / que industriosum Postulat 
interpretem / satira in vatis adversarium 


Tressis Agasonis Species prior altera 
Daui 

Aucupium culicis limis dum _ torquet 
ocellum 

Concipit: Aligeras rapit [a]ppetit aspice 
muskas: 

Maia queque fouet fouet aut que Juppiter 
aut que 

ffrigida / Saturnus . Sol . Mars. Venus. 
algida Luna 

Si tibi contingat verbo aut committere 
scripto 

Quam sibi mox tacita sudant precordia 
culpa 

Hinc ruit in flammas / stimulans hunc 
urget et illum 

Inuocat ad rixas . 
ignes 

Labra mouens tacitus rumpantur vt ilia 
Codro 


vanos tamen excitat 


-14.4.7.2.17.18.14.14. 
.18.19.1.8.17.12.14.14. 


106 
|Hys name for to know if that ye lyst 
| Enuyows Rancour truly he hyght 
| Beware of hym I warne yow for and ye 
wist 
How daungerows it is to stop vp his sight 
Ye wolde not dele wt hym thowthe that 
ye myght 740 
ffor by his devillishe dryfte and graceles 
prouysioun 
An hole reme he is habille to set at dyvy- 
sioun 
107 


ffor when he spekithe fayrest then thynk- 
kithe he moost II 
fful gloriowsly kan he glose thy mynde 


for to fele . 
He wille stir men to brawlyng and syt 
hym self stil 745 


Figures are in the prints: 
Lom ae eee li Z aml Ss 
Lie OFe tose One ae 


And smyrke lyke a smytthy kur at 
sparkkis of stele 

He kan neuer leve warke while it is 
wele 

To telle all his towchis it were to grete 
wunder 

The deuelle of helle and he be seldome 
asunder 


108 

Thus talkynge we went in at a posterne 
gate 750 

Turnnyd on the right hand by a wyndyng 
stayre 

She browght me in to a goodely chaum- 
ber of astate 

Where the nobille Countes of Surrey / 
in a chayre 

Sat honorably / : to whome did repayre 

Of ladis a beuy / wt all du reuerence 755 

Syt downe fayre ladis and do your dili- 
gence 


109 
Com forthe Jantilwomen I pray yow she 
sayde 
I have contryvyd for yow a goodely 
warke 
And who kan worke best now shall be 


asaiyd 
A coronelle of laurel withe verduris light 
and darke 760 


I have devisid for Skelton my clarke 

ffor to his seruyce I have soche regarde 

That of oure bownte we will hym re- 
warde 


110 
ffor of all ladis he hathe the library 
Ther namys recountynge in the courte 
of ffame 765 
Of all Jantylwomen he hathe the scruteny 
In famys courte reporttynge the same 


~ ffor yit of women he neuer sayd shame 


Bot if they wer Counterfettes that wom- 
en them call 

That liste of ther lewdenes withe hym for 
to brall: 770 


111 
Wythe that the tappettis and Carpettis 
were layd 
Where on theis ladis softly myght rest 
The saumplar to sow on the lasis to 
enbrayd 
To weue in the stole sum were fulle prest 
Withe slaiys withe tauellis with heddelles 
wele drest 775 


356 JOHN SKELTON 


The frame was browght forthe withe his 
wouynge 

God yeve them goode spede ther worke 
to begyn 

112 

Sum to enbrawder put them in prece 

Wel gydyng the glutton to kepe streyght 
ther sylk 

Sum pyrlynge of golde ther worke to 
encrese 780 

Withe ffynggers smale and _ handdis 
whyght as mylke 

Withe reche me that skene of tuly silke 

And wynde me that botum of soche a hu 

Grene rede tawny whyht blak purpulle 
and blu 


113 

Of broken workis wrowght many a 
goodely thynge 785 

In castinge in turnnynge in florisshinge 
of flowres 

Withe burris rowthe and buttunis sur- 
fullinge 

In nedel warke reisinge bothe birddis and 
bowres 


Withe vertu enbesid all tymes and howrys 
And truly of ther bownte thus were they 

bente 790 
'To worke me this chapelet by goode 

auysemente: 

114 
Occupacioun to Skelton 

Beholde and se in youre aduertisement 
How theis ladis and Jantilwomen all 
ffor yowre plesure do ther endeuorment 
And for youre sake how fast to worke 


they fall 795 
To youre remembraunce wherefor ye 
most call 


In goodely worddis pleasantly comprisid 
That for them sum goodely conceyte be 
deuysid 
115 


Wythe proper captaciouns of benyuo- 
lence 

Ornatly pullisshid after your faculte 800 

Sithe ye most nedis afforce it by pretence 

Of youre professioun vnto humanyte 

Commensynge your proces after ther de- 
gre 

To eche of them rendrynge thonkkis com- 
mendabill 

Wythe sentence fructuows and termmys 
couenabill 805 


784. blak is not in Faukes or Marshe. 


116 
Poeta Skelton 
Auaunsynge my self sum thonk to de- 
serue 
I me determynd for to sharpe my pen 
Deuowtly arrectynge my prayer to Myn- 
erve 
ee vowche saue me to enforme and 
en: 
To Marcury also hartly praiyd I then 870 
Me to supporte to helpe and to assist 
To gyde & to gouerne my dredefulle 
tremlyng fyst 
117 
As a maryner that masid is in a stormmy 
rage 
Hardly bestad driven is to hope 
Of that the tempestuows wynde wille 
aswage 815 
In troste where of counforte his harte 
dothe grope 
ffrome the Ankker he kyttithe the gabille 
rope 
Commyttithe all to god and lettithe his 
ship ride 
So I beseke Jhesu now to be my gyde 


118 


“To the Right nobille Countes of Surrey 


After all duly orderd obeisaunce 820 
In humbille wise as lawly as I may 

Vnto yow madame. I make reconusaunce 
My lif enduringe . I . shall bothe wright 


and say 

Recounte . reporte . reherce withe owte 
delay 

The passinge bownte of your nobille es- 
tate 825 


Of honour and worship whiche hathe the 
formar date 
119 
Lyke to Argyua by Juste resemblaunce 
The nobille wif of Polymytes kynge 
Prudent Rebecca of whome remem- 


braunce 
The bibille makithe: withe whos chast 
lyvynge 830 


Your nobille demenor is counterweiynge 

Whos passinge bownte and right nobil 
astate 

Of honour and worship it hathe the for- 
mar date 

120 

The nobille Pamphila quene of the grekis 

land 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 357 


Habilymenttis roiall fownd owte endus- 
triowsly 835 

Thamar also wrowght withe her goodely 
hand 

Many dyvisis passinge kuriowsly 

Whome ye represent and exemplify 

Whos passinge bownte and right nobille 
astate 

Of honour and worship it hathe the for- 
mar date 840 

121 

As dame Thamaris whiche toke the kinge 
of Perse 

Cyrus by name / as writithe the story 

Dame Agrippina also I may reherce 

Of Jantylle corage the perfight memory 

So shall your name endure perpetually 

Whos passinge bownte and right nobille 
astate 

Of honor and worship it hathe the former 
date 


122 
‘ To my lady Elisabethe [Howarde] 
To be your remembrancer Madam I am 
bownd 
Lyke to Aryna maydenly of porte 
Of vertew konyng the wel and parfight 
grownd 850 
Whome dame Nature as wele I may re- 
porte 
Hathe freshely enbewtid withe many a 
goodely sorte 
Of womanly feturis / : whos florisshinge 
tender age 
Is lusty to loke on plesant demure and 
sage: 
123 
Goodely Creisseyda fairar than Poly- 
cene 855 
ffor to envyve Pandarus appetite 
Troylus I trow if that he had yow sene 
In yow he wold have set his hole delight 
Of all your bewte I suffice not to wright 
Bot as I sayde your florisshynge tender 
age 860 
Is lusty to loke on plesant demur & sage 


124 
To my lady Myrryel [Howarde] 
My lytille lady I may not leue behynde 
Bot do her seruyce nedis now I must 
Benygne kurteise of Jantille harte and 
mynde 


Bracketed words from Faukes of 1523. 


Whome fortune and fate playnly have 
discust 865 

Longe to enioy plesure delight and luste 

Enbuddid blossome withe rosis rede of 
hu 

The lylly whight your bewte dothe renew: 


125 
Compare yow I may to Cydippes the 
mayd 
That of Aconycus when she fownd the 
bille 870 


In her bosum: lorde she was afraiyd 

The ruddy shamefastnes in her visage 
fylle 

Whiche manner of abashemente becam 
her not Il 

Right so madame the rosis rede of hu 

Withe lyllis whight your bewte dothe 
renew 875 

126 
To my lady Dakers 

Zeuxes that enpycturid fayre Elene the 
quene 

Yow to deuyse his craft were to seke: 

And if Apelles your countenaunce had 
sene 

Of porturature whiche was the famows 


greke 
He kowde not deuyse the lest poynte of 
your cheke 880 


Prynces of yowthe and floure of goodely 
porte 
Vertew konynge solace plesure counfort 


127 
Paregall in honour vnto Penolope 
That for her trowthe is in remembraunce 
had 
ffayre Dyanyra surmountynge in bewte 
Demure Dyana womanly and sad 886 
Whos lusty lokis make heuy harttis glad 
Prynces of yowthe and flowre of goodely 
porte 
Vertew konyng solace plesure conforte: 


To mastres Margery Wentworthe 
Wythe Mageran Jantel 890 
The flowre of goodlihode 
Enbrawderd the mantel 
Is of your maydenhode 


Playnly I kan not glose 

Ye be as I dyvyne 895 
The praty prymerose 

The goodely columbyne 


358 JOHN SKELTON 


Withe Mageran Jantel 
The floure of goodlihode 
Enbrawderd the mantel 
Is of your maydenhode 


Benygne curteise & meke 
Withe wordis wele deuysid 
In yow who list to seke 

Be vertewys wele comprisid 


Wythe Mageran Jantyl 

The floure of goodlyhode 
Enbrawderd the mantyl 
Is of your maydenhode: 


To mastres Margarete Tylnney 
I yow assure 
ffulle wele I know 
My besy cure 
To yow I ow 
Humbly and low 
Commendinge me 
To your bounte 


As Machareus 
ffayre Canace 
SO 5 lf. Is 
Endeuour me 
Your name to se 
It be enrold 
Wryttyn wt gold 


Phedra ye may 
Wele represente 
Intentyve ay 
And diligente 

No tyme mysspent 
Wherefor delight 
I have to wright 


Of Margaryte 
Perle oryente 
Lodestar of lyght 
Moche relucent: 
Madame regent 

I may yow call 
Of Vertuys all 


To mastres Jane Hasset 
What thowthe my pen wax faynte 
And hathe small lust to paynte 
Yet shall there no restraynte 
Cause me to cese 
Amonge this prese 
ffor to encrese 

Your goodely name 


900 


905 


910 


915 


920 


925 


930 


935 


940 


I wille my self apply 945 

Trost me intentyvely 

Yow for to stellify 

And so observe 

That ye ne swerve 

ffor to deserve 950 
The courte of fame 


Sythe mastres Jane Hasset 

Smale flowris helpt to set 

In my goodely chapelet 

Therefor I render of her the memory 955 
Vnto the legend of fayre Laodomy: 


To mastres Isbill Pennel: 
By seynte mary my lady 
Youre mammy and your dady 
Browght forthe a goodely baby 
My maydyn Isabel 960 
Reflayringe Rosabel 
The flagrant Camamel 
The ruddy Rosary 
The souereyne Rosemary 
The praty strawbery 965 
The Columbyne the nept 
The Jeloffer wele set 
The proper vyolet 
Ennewyd (your) colour 
Is like the daisy flour 970 
After the Apryle shour 
Star of the morow gray 
The blossom on the spray 
The fresshest flour of may 
Maydenly demure 975 
Of womanhode the lure 
Wherefor I yow assure 
It wer an hevenly helthe 
It wer an endles welthe 
A lif for god hym (selfe) 980 
To here this nytyngale 
Amonge the byrddis smale 
Warbolynge in the vale 
Dug Dug 
Jug Jug 985 
Goode yere and goode luk 
Wyth chuk chuk . chuk chuk: 


To mastres Margarete Hussey: 
Myrry Margarete as mydsomer floure 
Jantylle as fawkon or hauke of the towr 
Withe solace and gladnes 990 
Moche myrthe and no madnes 
All goode and no badnes 
So Joyously 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 359 


So maydenly 

So womanly 995 
Her demenynge 

In euery thynge 

ffar far passinge 

That I kan endight 

Or suffice to wright 1000 
Of myrry margaret as mydsomer flowre 
Jantille as faukon or hawke of the towre 
As pacient and as stille 

And as fulle of goode wille 

As the fayre Isyphill 1005 
Colyaundar 

Swete pomaunder 

Goode Cassander 

Stedfast of thowght 

Wele made wele wrowght 1010 
ffar may be sowght 

Erst than ye kan fynde 

So kurteise so kynde 

As myrry Marget the mydsomer flowre 
Jantille as fawkon or hawke of the towre 


To mastres Geretrude Statham 
Thowthe ye were harde harttid 
And I withe yow thwartyd 
With worddis that smarttid 
Yit now dowtles ye geve me cause 
To wright of yow this goodely clause 1020 
Mastres Geretrude 
Wt womanhode endude 
Wt vertew wele renewde 
I wille that ye shall be 
In all benygnyte 1025 
Lyke to dame Pasiphe 
ffor now dowtles ye geve me cause 
To wright of yow this goodely clause 
Mastres Geretrude 
Wt womanhode endude 1030 
Withe vertew wele renewde 
Partly by your counselle 
Garnnysshid withe laurelle 
Was my freshe coronelle 
Wherfor dowtless ye geve me cause 1035 
To wright of yow this goodely clause 
Mastres Geretrude 
Withe womanhode endude 
Withe vertu wele renewde 


To mastres Isbell Knyght 
Bot if I shulde aquyte your kyndnes 1040 
Els say ye myght: 
That in me were grete blyndnes 
I for to be so myndles 


And kowde not wright: 
Of Isbel Knyght: 1045 


It is not my kustome nor my gyse 

To leve behynde: 

Her that is both maydenly & wise 

And specially whiche glad was to deuyse 
The mene to fynde: ; 1050 
To plese my mynde: 


In helpynge to warke my laureel grene 
Withe silke and golde: 

Galathea the maide wele besene 

Was neuer half so fayre as I wene 1055 
Which was extolde: 

A thowsand folde: 


By Maro the mantuane prudent 

Who list to rede 

Bot and I had leysor competente 1060 
I kowde shew soche a presedente 

In verey dede 

How ye excede: 


128 
Occupacioun to Skelton 
Wythdraw your hand the tyme passithe 
fast 
Set on your hede this laurelle whiche is 
wrowght 1065 
Here ye not Eolus for yow blowithe a 
blast 
I dare wele say that ye and I be sowght 
Make no delay for now ye most be 
browght 
Before my ladis grace the quene of fame 
Where ye most brevely aunswere to your 
name 1070 
129 
Poeta Skelton 
Castinge my sight the chaumber aboute 
To se how duly eche thinge in Order was 
Toward the durre as we were komynge 


owte 

I saw Master Newton sit withe his com- 
pas 

His plummet his penselle his specktakils 
of glas 1075 

Deuysinge in picture by his industryows 
wit 

Of my Laureell the proces euery whit 


130 
fforthwt vpon this as it were in a 
thowght 
Gower Chawser Lydgate theis iij 1079 


360 JOHN SKELTON 


Before rememberd: kurteisly me browght 

In to that place where as they left me 

Where all the saide poetis sat in ther 
degre 

But when they saw my lawrelle rychely 
wro(wght) 

All thos bt they ware were counterfettis 
they (thowght) 


131 
In comparison of that whiche I ware 1085 
Sum praisid the perle sum the stonys 
bright 
Wele was hym that there vpon myght 
stare 
Of this worke they had so grete delight 
The silke the golde the floures freshe to 


sight 
They saide my laureel was the goodely- 
est I09o 


That euer they saw: and wrowght it was 
the best 


132 
In her astate there sat the nobille quene 
Of fame / : perceyvynge how that I was 
kum 
She wonderde me thowght at my laurelle 


grene 
She lokid hawtely and yave on me a 
glum 1095 
There was not a worde amonge them then 
bot mvm 
ffor eche man harkend what she to me 
wold say 
Where of in substance I browght this 
away 


133 
The quene of ffame to Skelton 

My frynde sithe ye are before vs here 
present 

To aunswere vnto this nobille audyence 

Of pt shall be resond yow ye most be 
content: / 

And for asmoche as by the higthe pre- 
tense 

That ye haue now thorow preemynence 

Of laureat promocioun / : your place is 
here reservyd 

We wille vnderstand how ye have it 
deservid II05 


1083, 1084. Mutilations of MS supplied from 
Faukes. 


134 
Poeta Skelton to the quene of ffame 
Right higthe and myghtty prynces of 
(astate ) 
In famows glory all other transcenddinge 
Of your bownte the acustomabille rate 
Hathe bene fulle oftene and yit is en- 
tendinge II09 
To all that to reson is condiscendynge 
Bot if hastyve credence by mayntenaunce 
of myght 
ffortune to stande bytwene yow and the 


light 
135 


Bot soche evydence I thynke for me to 
enduce 

And so largely to ley for myn Indemnyte 

That I troste to make myne excus 1115 

Of what charge so euer ye ley ageyne me 

ffor of my bokis parte ye shall se 

Whiche in your recorddis I know wele 
be (enrolde) 

And so Occupacioun your regester me 
told 


[Vitellius MS defective. Text below 
from Faukes.] 


136 
Forth with she commaundid I shulde take 
my place 1120 
Caliope poynted me where I shulde sit 
With that occupacioun presid in a pace 
Be mirry she sayd be not aferde a whit 
Your discharge here vnder myne arme 
is it 
So then commaundid she was vpon this 
To shew her boke: and she sayd here it is 


137 
The quene of fame to occupacioun. 
Yowre bokes of remembrauns we will 
now pt ye rede 
If ony recordis in noumbyr can be founde 
What Skelton hath compilid & wryton in 
dede 
Rehersyng by ordre & what is the 


grownde 1130 
Let se now for hym how ye can ex- 
pounde 


For in owr courte ye wote wele his name 
can not ryse 

But if he wryte oftenner than ones or 
twyse 


1107, 1118. MS defective. Text from Faukes 


print. 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 


138 
Skelton Poeta. 
With that of the boke losende were the 
claspis 
The margent was illumynid all with gold- 
en railles 1135 
And byse: enpicturid wt gressoppes and 
waspis 
Wt butterflyis and fresshe pecoke taylis 
Enflorid wt flowris and slymy snaylis 
Enuyuid picturis well towchid & quikly 
It wolde haue made a man hole pt had 
be ryght sekely 1140 


139 
To be holde how it was garnysshyd & 
bounde 
Encouerde ouer wt golde of tissew fyne 
The claspis and bullyons were worth a 
thousande pounde 
Wt balassis & charbuncles the borders did 
shyne 1144 
With aurum musicum euery other lyne 
Was wrytin: and so she did her spede 
Occupacyoun immediatly to rede 


140 
Occupacyoun redith and expoundyth sum 
parte of Skeltons bokes and balades wt 
ditis of plesure in asmoche as it were to 
longe a proces to reherse all by name pt 
he hath compylyd &c. 


Of your oratour and poete laureate 
Of Englande his workis here they be- 
gynne 1149 
In primis the boke of honorous astate 
Item the boke how men shuld fle synne 
Item royall demenaunce worshyp to wyne 
Item the boke to speke well or be styll 
Item to lerne you (t)o dye when ye wyll 


141 
Of vertu also the souerayne enterlude 
The boke of be rosiar: prince arturis 


creacyoun 1156 
The false fayth bt now goth which dayly 
is renude 


Item his diologgis of ymagynacyoun 
Item antomedon of loues meditacyoun 
Item new gramer in englysshe compylyd 
Item bowche of courte where drede was 
be gyled 
142 

His commedy achademios callyd by name 
Of tullis familiars the translacyoun 


361 


Item good aduysement that brainles doth 
blame : 

The recule ageinst gaguyne of the frenshe 
nacyoun I165 

Item the popingay pt hath in commenda- 
cyoun 

Ladyes and gentylwomen suche as de- 
seruyd 

And suche as be counterfettis they be 
reseruyd 

143 

And of soueraynte a noble pamphelet 

And of magnyfycence a notable mater 

How cownterfet cowntenaunce of the 
new get 1171 

Wt crafty conueyaunce dothe smater and 
flater 

And cloked collucyoun is brought in to 
clater 

Wt courtely abusyoun: who pryntith it 
wele in mynde 

Moche dowblenes of the worlde therin he 
may fynde 1175 


144 

Of manerly margery maystres mylke 
and ale 

To her he wrote many maters of myrthe 

Yet thoughe ye say it ther by lyith a 
tale 

For margery wynshed and breke her 
hinder girth 

Lor(de) how she made moche of her 
gentyll birth 1180 

With gingirly go gingerly her tayle was 
made of hay 

Go she neuer so gingirly her honesty is 
gone a way 


145 
Harde to make ought of that is nakid 
nought 
This fustiane maistres and this giggisse 
gase 
Wonder is to wryte what wrenchis she 
wrowght 1185 


To face out her foly wt a midsomer mase 

Wt pitche she patchid her pitcher shuld 
not crase 

It may wele ryme but shroudly it doth 
accorde 

To pyke out honesty of suche a potshorde 


Patet per versus. 
Hine puer hic natus: vir coniugis hinc 
spoliatus 


362 JOHN SKELTON 


Iure thori: est: fetus deli de sanguine 
cretus 
Hine magis extollo quod erit puer alter 
apollo 
Si queris qualis: meretrix castissima 
talis 
Et relis et ralis: et reliqualis 
A good herynge of thes olde talis 1790 
Fynde no mor suche fro wanflete to 
walis 
Et relequa omelia de diuersis tractati- 
bus 


146 
Of my ladys grace at the contemplacyoun 
Owt of frenshe in to englysshe prose 
Of mannes lyfe the peregrynacioun 
He did translate / enterprete and dis- 
close T1195 
The tratyse of triumphis of the rede rose 
Where in many storis ar breuely con- 
tayned 
That vn remembred longe tyme remayn- 
ed 


147 

The duke of yorkis creauncer whan Skel- 
ton was 

Now Henry the. viij . kyng of Englonde 

A tratyse he deuysid and browght it to 
pas 

Callid speculum principis to bere in his 
honde 

Therin to rede and to vnderstande 

All the demenour of princely astate 

To be our kyng of god preordinate 1205 


148 
Also the tunnynge of elinour rummyng 
Wt pon clowt / iohn iue / with ioforth 
iac 
To make suche trifels it asketh sum kon- 
nyng 
In honest myrth parde requyreth no lack 
The whyte apperyth the better for the 
black 1210 
And after conueyauns as the world goos 
It is no foly to vse the walshemannys 
hoos 


149 
The vmblis of venyson / the botell of 
wyne 
To fayre maistres anne pt shuld haue be 
sent 
He wrate therof many a praty lyne 1215 
Where it became and whether it went 


And how that it was wantonly spent 
The balade also of the mustarde tarte 
Suche problemis to paynt it longyth to 


his arte 
150 
Of one adame all a knaue late dede and 
gone 1220 


Dormiat in pace / lyke a dormows 

He wrate an epitaph for his graue stone 

Wt wordes deuoute and sentence ager- 
dows 

For he was euer ageynst goddis hows 

All his delight was to braule and to 


barke 1225 
Ageynst holy chyrche the preste and the 
clarke 
151 


Of phillip sparow the lamentable fate 
The dolefull desteny and the carefull 


chaunce 

Dyuysed by Skelton after the funerall 
rate 

Yet sum there be there wt that take greu- 
aunce 1230 

And grudge ther at wt frownyng counte- 
naunce 

But what of that: hard it is to please 
all men 


Who list amende it let hym set to his 
penne 


For the gyse now a days 

Of sum iangelyng iays 1235 
Is to discommende 

Pt they can not amende 

Though they wolde spende 

All the wittis they haue 

What ayle them to depraue 1240 
Phillippe sparows graue 

His dirige: her commendacioun 

Can be no derogacyoun 

But myrth & consolacyoun 

Made by protestacyon 1245 
No man to myscontent 

With phillippis enteremente 


Alas that goodly mayd 

Why shulde she be afrayd 

Why shulde she take shame 1250 
That her goodly name 

Honorably reportid 

Shulde be set and sortyd 

To be matriculate 

With ladyes of astate 1255 
I coniure be Phillip sparow 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 


By hercules pt hell did harow 


And wt a venomows arow 
Slew of the epidawris 
One of the centauris 

Or onocentauris 

Or hippocentaurus : 
By whos myght and maine 
An hart was slayne 

Wt hornnis twayne 

Of glitteryng golde 

And the apples of golde 
Of hesperides with holde 
And with a dragon kepte 
That neuer more slepte 
By merciall strength 

He wan at length 

And slew gerione 

With thre bodys in one 
With myghty corrage 

A dauntid the rage 

Of a lyon sauage. 

Of diomedis stabyll 

He brought out a rabyll 
Of coursers and rounsis 
Wit(h) lepes and bounsis 
And wt myghty luggyng 
Wrastelynge and tuggyng 
He pluckid the bull 

By the hornid scull 

And offred to cornucopia 
And so forthe per cetera 


Also by hecates powre 

In plutos gastly towre 

By the vgly Eumenides. 
Pt neuer haue rest nor ease 
By be venemows serpent 
That in hell is neuer brente 
In lerna the grekis fen 
That was engendred then 
By chemeras flamys 

And all the dedely namys 
Of infernall posty 

Where soulis fry and rosty 
By the stigiall flode 

And the stremes wode 

Of cochitos bottumles well 
By the feryman of hell 
Caron wt his berde hore 
That rowyth wt a rude ore 
And wt his frownsid fortop 
Gydith his bote wt a prop 

I coniure phillippe & call 
In be name of kyng Saull 
Primo regum expres 


1260 


1205 


1270 


1275 


1280 


1285 


1290 


I295 


1300 


1305 


1310 


i 
oO’ 
we 


He bad the phitones 

To witche craft her to dres 

And by her abusiouns 

And damnable illusiouns 

Of meruelous conclusiouns 1315 
And by her supersticiouns 

Of wonderfull condiciouns 

She raysed vp in pe stede 

Samuell that was dede 

But whether it were so 1320 
He were idem in numero 

The selfe same Samuell 

How be it to Saull he did tell 

The phillistinis shulde hym askry 

And the next day he shulde dye 1325 
I wyll me selfe discharge 

To letterd men at large 

But phillip I coniure the 

Now by theys names thre 

Diana in the woddis grene 1330 
Luna that so bryght doth shene 
Proserpina in hell 

That thou shortely tell 

And shew now vnto me 

What the cause may be 1335 
Of this proplexyte 


Phillyppe answeryth 
Inferias phillippe tuas Scroupe pulcra 
Tohanna 
Instanter peciit: cur nostri carminis 
illam 
Nunc pudet: est sero: minor est: infamia 
vero 


Then such that haue disdaynyd 

And of this worke complaynyd 

I pray god they be paynyd 

No wors (than) is contaynyd 1340 
In verses two or thre 

That folowe as ye may se 


Luride cur liuor volucrum pia funera 


damnas 

Talia te rapiant rapiunt que fata volu- 
crem. 

Est tamen inuidia mors tibi continua 


152 
The gruntyng (& the) groynninge (of 
the) gronnyng swyne 
Also the murmyng of the mapely rote 
How the grene couerlet sufferd grete 
pine 1345 


1340. Faukes and; Marshe than. 
1343. Bracketed words from Marshe’s ed. 


364 JOHN SKELTON 


Whan the flye net was set for to catche 
a cote 

Strake one with a birdbolt to the hart 
rote 

Also a deuoute prayer to moyses hornis 

Metrifyde merely / medelyd with stormis 


153 
Of paiauntis pt were played in ioyows 
garde 1350 
He wrate of a muse throw a mud wall 
How a do cam trippyng in at the rere 
warde 
But lorde how the parker was wroth with 
all 
And of castell aungell the fenestrall 
Glittryng and glistryng and gloryously 
glasid 13 
It made sum mens eyn: dasild and dasid 


154 

The repete of the recule of rosamundis 
bowre 

Of his pleasaunt paine there and his glad 
distres 

In plantynge and pluckynge a propre 
ieloffer flowre 

But how it was sum were to recheles 

Not withstandynge it is remedeles 

What myght she say: what myght he do 
therto 

Though iak sayd nay: yet mok there 
loste her sho 

155 

How than lyke a man he wan the barbi- 
can 1364 

With a sawte of solace at the longe last 

The colour dedely swarte blo and wan 

Of exione her lambis dede and past 

The cheke and the nek but a shorte cast 

In fortunis fauour euer to endure 

No man lyuyng he sayth can be sure 1370 


156 

How dame minuerua first found be olyue 
tre: she red 

And plantid it there where neuer before 
was none: vnshred 

An hynde vnhurt hit by casuelte: not 
bled 

Recouerd whan the forster was gone: 
and sped 

The hertis of the herd began for to 
grone: and fled 1375 

The howndis began to yerne & to quest: 
and dred 


Wt litell besynes standith moche rest: 
in bed 


157 
His epitomis of the myller & his ioly 
make 
How her ble was bryght as blossom on 


the spray 
A wanton wenche and wele coude bake a 
cake 1380 


The myllar was loth to be out of the way 
But yet for all that be as be may 

Whether he rode to swassham or to some 
The millar durst not leue his wyfe at 


home 
158 
Wt wofully arayd and shamefully be- 
trayd 1385 


Of his makyng deuoute medytacyons 

Uexilla regis he deuysid to be displayd 

Wt sacris solempniis and other contem- 
placyouns 

That in them comprisid consyderacyons 

Thus passyth he the tyme both nyght 
and day 1390 

Sumtyme wt sadnes sumtyme with play 


159 
Though galiene and diascorides 
With ipocras and mayster auycen 
By there phesik doth many a man ease 
And though albumasar can be enforme 


and ken 1395 
What constellacions ar good or bad for 
men 


Yet whan the rayne rayneth and be gose 
wynkith 

Lytill wotith be goslyng what be gose 
thynkith 


160 

He is not wyse ageyne be streme pt 
stryuith 

Dun is in pe myre dame reche me my 
spur 1400 

Nededes must he rin that the deuyll dryu- 
it 

When the stede is stolyn spar the stable 
dur 

A ientyll hownde shulde neuer play the 
kur 

It is sone aspyd where the thorne prik- 
kith 

And wele wotith the cat whos berde she 
likkith 1405 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 365 


161 
With marione clarione sol lucerne 
Graund iuir: of this frenshe prouerbe 
olde 
How men were wonte for to discerne 
By candelmas day what wedder shuld 
holde 
But marione clarione was caught wt a 
colde colde 1410 
[anglice a cokwolde] 
& all ouercast wt cloudis vnkynde 
This goodly flowre wt stormis was vn- 
twynde 
162 
This ieloffer ientyll / this rose this lylly 
flowre 
This prime rose pereles / this propre 
vyolet 
This delycate dasy / this strawberry 
pretely set 1415 
This columbyne clere and fresshest of 
coloure 
Wt frowarde frostis alas was all to fret 
But who may haue a more vngracyous 
lyfe 
Than a chyldis birde and a knauis wyfe 
Thynke what ye wyll 1420 
Of this wanton byll 
By mary gipcy 
Quod scripsi scripsi 
Uxor tua sicut vitis 
Habetis in custodiam 1425 
Custodite sicut scitis 
Secundum lucam .&c. 


163 
Of the bone homs of a shrige besyde 
barkamstede 
That goodly place to Skelton moost kynde 
Where the sank royall is crystes blode so 


rede 1430 
Where vpon he metrefyde after his 
mynde 


A plesaunter place than a shrige is harde 
where to fynde 

As Skelton rehersith with wordes few 
and playne 

In his distincyon made on verses twaine 


Fraxinus in cliuo : frondetque viret sine 
riuo 

Non est sub diuo:similis sine flumine 
viuo. 


1411. Bracketed words from Faukes; not in Marshe. 


164 

The nacyoun of folys he left not be- 
hynde 1435 

Item apollo that whirllid vp his chare 

That made sum to s(n)urt and snuf in 
the wynde 

It made them to skip to stampe and to 
stare 

Whiche if they be happy haue cause to 
beware 

In rymyng and raylyng with hym for to 
mell 1440 

For drede that he lerne them there A. 
B. C. to spell 


165 
Poeta Skelton 
With that I stode vp halfe sodenly a 
frayd 
Suppleyng to fame I besought her grace 
And pt it wolde please her full tenderly 
I prayd 
Owt of her bokis apollo to rase 1445 
Nay sir she sayd: what so in this place 
Of our noble courte is ones spoken owte 
It must nedes after rin all the worlde 
a boute 
166 
God wote theis wordes made me full sad 
And when that I sawe it wolde no better 
be 1450 
But that my peticyon wolde not be had 
What shulde I do but take it in gre 
For by iuppiter and his high mageste 
I did what I cowde to scrape out the 


scrollis 
Apollo to rase out of her ragman rol- 
lis 1455 
167 
Now here of it erkith me lenger to 
wryte 


To occupacyon I wyll agayne resorte 
Whiche rede on still as it cam to her 


syght 

Rendrynge my deuisis I made in des- 
porte 

Of the mayden of Kent callid coun- 
forte 1460 


Of louers testamentis and of there wan- 
ton wyllis 
And how iollas louyd goodly phillis 


168 
Diodorus Siculus of my translacyon 
Out of fresshe latine in to oure englisshe 
playne 


366 JOHN SKELTON 


Recountyng commoditis of many a 
straunge nacyon 1465 

Who redyth it ones wolde rede it agayne 

Sex volumis engrosid to gether it doth 
containe 

But when of the laurell she made rehersall 

All orators and poetis wt other grete 


and smale 
169 
A thowsande thowsande I trow to my 
dome 1470 


Triumpha triumpha they cryid all aboute 

Of trumpettis and clariouns the noyse 
went to rome 

The starry heuyn me thought shoke wt 
the showte 

The grownde gronid & tremblid be noyse 

was so stowte 

|The quene of fame commaundid shett 


| fast be boke 1475 

And ther with sodenly out of my dreme 
I woke 

170 

My mynde of the grete din was somdele 
amasid 

I wypid myne eyne for to make them 
clere 


Then to the heuyn sperycall vpwarde I 
gasid 
Where I saw Janus wt his double 
chere 1480 
Makynge his almanak for the new yere 
He turnyd his tirikkis his voluell ran fast 
Good luck this new yere the olde yere is 
past 
Mens tibi sit consulta petis: sic con- 
sule menti 
Emula sis iani retro speculetur et ante 
Skeltonis alloquium Librum suum. 
Ite britannorum lux :O radiosa britan- 
num 
Carmina nostra pium vestrum celebrate 
catullum. 
Dicite Skeltonis 
Vester adonis erat. 
Dicite Skeltonis 
Vester Homerus erat. 
Barbara cum lacio pariter iam currite 
versu. 
Et licet est verbo pars maxima texta 
britanno. 
Non magis incompta: 
Nostra thalya patet. 
Est magis inculta: 
Nec mea caliope. 


Nec vos peniteat liuoris tela subire. 
Nec vobis peniteat rabiem tolerare cani- 
nam. 
Nam Maro dissimiles 
Non tulit ille minas. 
Immunis nec enim 
Musa nasonis erat. 


Lenuoy 
Go litil quaire 
Demene you faire 1485 
Take no dispare 
Though I you wrate 
After this rate. 
In englysshe letter 
So moche the better 1490 
Welcome shall ye 
To sum men be 
For latin warkis 
Be good for clerkis 
Yet now and then 1495 
Sum Latin men 
May happely loke 
Upon your boke 
And so procede 
In you to rede 1500 
That so in dede 
Your fame may sprede 
In length and brede 
But then I drede 
Ye shall haue nede 1505 
You for to spede 
To harnnes bryght 
By force of myght 
Ageyne enuy 
And obloquy 1510 
And wote ye why 
Not for to fyght 
Ageyne dispyght 
Nor to derayne 
Batayle agayne 1515 
Scornfull disdayne 
Not for to chyde 
Not for to hyde 
You cowardly 
But curteisly 1520 
That I haue pende 
For to deffend 
Under the banner 
Of all good maner 
Under proteccyon 1525 
Of sad correccyon 
With toleracyon 
And supportacyon 
Of reformacyon 


THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 367 


If they can spy 1530 
Circumspectly 
Any worde defacid 
That myght be rasid 
Els ye shall pray 
Them that ye may 1535 
Contynew still 
With there good wyll 
Admonet Skeltonis: omnes / arbores 
Dare locum viridi lauro / Iuxta genus 
suum 
Fraxinus in siluis: altis 
In montibus Orni. 
Populus in fluuiis Abies 
Patulissima Fagus. 
Lenta Salix platanus pinguis ficulnea 
ficus 
Glandifera et Quercus / pirus / esculus 
ardua pinus. 


Balsamus exudans; oleaster / oliua min- 
erue 

Iunipirus Buxus: lentiscus cuspide lenta. 

Botrigera & domino vitis gratissima 
Baccho 

Tlex & sterilis / labrusta per rosa colonis 

Mollibus exudans fragrancia thura Sa- 
beis 

Thus: redolens arabis pariter notissima 
mirrha 

Et vos o corili fragiles: Humilesque 
mirice. 

Et vos o Cedri redolentes vos quoque 
mirti. 

Arboris omne genus viridi concedite 
Lauro. 

Prenness En gre 


GEORGE CAVENDISH: METRICAL VISIONS 


The author of a prose narrative of Cardinal Wolsey’s closing years, written 
evidently by one closely connected with Wolsey, was long supposed to be Sir 
William Cavendish. Early biographical and genealogical compilations such, e.g., 
as the Biographia Britannica of 1741-66, mentioned the fact that the work had 
sometimes been attributed to Sir William’s elder brother George, but rejected the 
possibility. In 1814, however, an essay by Joseph Hunter established the author 
as George Cavendish, gentleman-usher to the Cardinal. This essay is reprinted by 
Singer, as below, in his edition of the biography. 

George Cavendish, born about 1500, died 1561 or 1562, became connected 
with the Cardinal’s household in 1526 or 1527, and remained with his lord until 
Wolsey’s death in 1530. He lived thereafter a quiet country life, although his 
younger brother William rose to title and fortune; the memoir of Wolsey was the 
work of these years, and is almost our first piece of separate biography in Eng- 
lish, preceded only by More’s (unfinished) life of Richard the Third. The work 
had an extensive circulation in manuscript among the generation just following 
the Cardinal’s death, but was not published until 1641, doubtless because of the 
author’s frank comments on Tudor royalty. Some fifteen or more manuscripts 
of it exist ; one of these, believed to be in Cavendish’s own hand, contains also a set 
of poems, death-laments by Wolsey, by Anne Boleyn and her fellow-sufferers, by 
King Henry, by Surrey, and many others. These poems are in the same script as 
is the prose Life of the same volume, and the comments which follow each lament 
are headed “Lauctour G. C.” Their first (and only) editor, Singer, had no hesi- 
tation in ascribing these “Metrical Visions” to George Cavendish also. 

Not only in plan but in execution the poems show the influence of Lydgate’s 
Fall of Princes; and we may remark that an edition of that work had appeared 
in 1554, the next earlier print being in 1527. There is the same defile of the mourn- 
ing figures past the author, the same comment of the author upon each figure; 
there is the same emphasis on the fickleness of Fortune, who is called “gery for- 
tune furious and wood”, as by Lydgate in book iii, line 2405; there are occasional 
attempts at the use of refrain in the author’s comment or envoy, as Lydgate had 
used it ; there is obvious borrowing in Cavendish’s lines 167-8 (see note here) ; and 
Cavendish’s lines 246-252 are lifted bodily from Fall of Princes iii :3760 ff. 

It is very improbable that Cavendish’s verse exerted any influence on the 
Mirror for Magistrates, which was coming into existence just as Cavendish finished 
his Visions. The tragedy of Wolsey, by Thomas Churchyard, which is included 
in the Mirror, owes nothing to the living, if awkward, stanzas by Cavendish put 
into Wolsey’s mouth. Nor does the later poem of Storer show any trace of Cav- 
endish’s verse. Thomas Storer published in 1599 The Life and Death of Thomas 
Wolsey Cardinall—etc.; and this was reprinted Oxford, 1826, and included in 
Part ii of Park’s Heliconia, 1815. Storer’s poem is of 241 stanzas rime royal, and 
is divided into three parts, Wolsey Aspirans, Wolsey Triumphans, Wolsey Moriens. 
It has a few passages of interest, especially in the regret of Wolsey at losing 
Henry’s friendship; “I am the tombe where that affection lies”, and its following 
lines, have an Elizabethan ring. 


[ 368 J 


THE METRICAL VISIONS 369 


But neither Storer, nor Churchyard, nor Cavendish in his verse has any 
touch to bear comparison with the closing sentences of Cavendish’s own prose. 
His “Visions” are clumsy and stilted, loaded with rhetoric and fettered by for- 
mulae ; they have indeed their verities, but it is only when we turn to the prose 
life of Wolsey that a human voice speaks simply and freely. There every page 
has its interest, every page is candid; but the close is worthy of Bunyan. Caven- 
dish has been summoned, after the Cardinal’s death, to report to King Henry ; and 

_the Duke of Norfolk, acting as the king’s intermediary, concludes the business 
with Cavendish. ‘“He showed me,” says Cavendish, “how the king was my good 
and gracious lord, and had given me six of the best horses that I could choose 
amongst all my lord’s cart horses, with a cart to carry my stuff, and five marks 
for my cost homewards, and hath commanded me ten pounds for my wages being 
behind unpaid and twenty pounds for a reward. And he willed me to meet 
with him the next day at London; and there to receive both my money, my stuff, 
and horses that the king gave me; and so I did; of whom I received all things 
according, and then I returned into my country.” 

The manuscript from which I print, Egerton 2402 of the British Museum, con- 
tains only Cavendish’s life of Wolsey and the appended poems, here unique. The 
“Metrical Visions”, as their first editor Singer entitled them, are separately paged, 
1 to 58, and their leaves are confused in binding, as has been noted on the lower 
margins already by a ?Stuart hand. The page-order should be :—1-20, 35, 36, 41- 
54, 37-40, 21-34, 55-58. That is, the manuscript being in sixes and in fours, the 
bunch 21-34, composed of one six and two fours, was exchanged for the similarly- 
composed bunch 41-54, the latter being thrust in between the first and second 
leaves of the gathering 35-40. The Life and the Visions are in the same hand, a 
somewhat crabbed script said by Singer to be that of Cavendish himself ; facsimiles 
of it are included in Singer’s 1825 edition, to face page xvii of vol. i. The scribe 
of the poems made frequent alterations as he wrote, inserting words with a caret, 
deleting, rewriting. It would seem that Cavendish closed off and then continued 
his work from time to time; for twice at least in the long series of lamenting per- 
sonages a “Finis” has been put, and then more material, of later date, added. 
After mourning, in his own person, the death of Edward VI, Cavendish welcomes 
the accession of Mary, whom he describes as a maiden queen; but the final poem 
of the series bewails Mary’s death, and mentions her successor Elizabeth. Yet 
the colophon which follows upon this and upon the author’s farewell address to 
his book runs :—‘“Finie et compile le xxilij jour de Junij anno regnorum Philippi 
Rex et Reg. Mariae iiijti & vti. Per le auctor G. C.”” Below which, and apparently 
later, appears “Novus Rex Nova Lex Nova sola Regina proborum pene ruina”’,— 
such a comment as a devout Catholic might permit himself to his private journal 
on the Protestant Elizabeth’s accession. Considering the disorder of leaves, we 
may query if Cavendish himself separated them in order to force in the Epitaph 
of Queen Mary, after he had written his Philip and Mary colophon. For although 
the date of that colophon is 1558, the fourth year of Philip and fifth of Mary, yet 
Mary died in November 1558, five months after the June date which Cavendish 
there gives. 

The first edition of the life of Wolsey and the poems, from the authoritative 
“autograph” manuscript, was by Samuel Weller Singer, London, 1825, two vols. 
Singer’s text is in the main correct, although he “slightly” modernized the ortho- 
graphy. He omits occasionally in our parts of the poem, as noted lines 38, 1119, 





370 GEORGE CAVENDISH 


and line 1368 entire; he inserts in 272, 1193, epilogue 39; in 1182, 1400 by error, 
and epilogue 8, he alters.. He appended much valuable illustrative material. In his 
second edition, London, 1827, one vol., the poems were cut to little more than 
Wolsey’s own lament. Other editors of the Life have passed the poems un- 
mentioned. 

Singer’s 1827 text of the Life was reprinted by Henry Morley in his Uni- 
versal Library, London, 1885, again 1887, accompanied by Churchyard’s Wolsey- 
stanzas from A Mirror for Magistrates, but not by the Visions or by any allusion 
to them. Morley’s error of “1815” instead of “1825” in describing Singer’s first 
edition has been copied by later editors and even by the Dict. Nat. Biog. 

The Life of Wolsey was edited by F. S. Ellis for the Kelmscott Press in 1893, 
from the “autograph” MS but with no mention of the Visions. Ellis’ text, the 
spelling modernized, was printed in the Temple Classics, 1893, with Churchyard’s 
poem, but with no mention of the Visions. Singer’s text was reprinted Boston, 
1905, with Ellis’ corrections ; no mention of the Visions. 

In the Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain, ed. Mary 
A. E. Wood, 3 vols., London, 1846, Cavendish’s stanzas on the Countess of Salis- 
bury and on Lady Jane Grey are printed in the Notes, iii :94-5 and 273-4, from 
Singer. 

Previous to Singer the memoir had been published in 1641, in a garbled form, 
as “The Negotiations of Thomas Wolsey the Great Cardinal” etc. This was re- 
printed 1667, 1706, and in the Harleian Miscellany, 1744-46 and later. It was 
also included in Joseph Grove’s history of the life and times of Cardinal Wolsey, 
London, 1742-44, four vols. Grove, who reproduced the 1641 text, is said by 
Singer to have later discovered its unsoundness, and to have issued privately, in 
1761, a few copies from manuscript. 

The Life was printed in vol. 1 of Christopher Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical 
Biography, 1818 and later, from four MSS, not including the “autograph” text; 
Wordsworth therefore knows nothing of the poems. The text of his fourth edition 
was reprinted by J. Holmes, London, 1852, and a “slightly altered” text by “E. H.”, 
London, 1855. 

In 1901 the Life was reprinted in London by Grace H. M. Simpson, from the 
1667 text. She asserts that this is the earliest, and that the author was William 
Cavendish; she refers to the Biographia Britannica. 


[MS Brit. Mus. Egerton 2402] 


Prolougus de lauctor G. C. 
In the monyth of June / I lyeng sole alon 
Vnder the vmber of an Oke / wt bowes 
pendaunt 
Whan Phebus in Gemynys / had his 
course ouergoon 


Corrections are made by the scribe, viz.:—1, of 
is inserted with a caret; similarly mean in 5, 
in in 6, all in 22. Singer in 13 reads gystes, 
which’ he explains as “gests, actions’; he reads 
devysing in 18; he alters lion to Leo in 6; 
and he omits the third of in 7 and this in 20. 
In 25 he reads spent. 


And entred Cancer / a sygne retrograd- 
aunt 

In a mean measure / his beames rady- 
aunt Fy 

Approchyng lion / than mused I in 


myn 
Of ffikkellnes of ffortune / and of the 
course of kynd 
2 
Howe some are by fortune / exalted to 
riches 


THE METRICAL VISIONS 371 


And often suche / as most vnworthy be 
And some oppressed / in langor and 
syknes / 10 
Some waylyng lakkyng welthe / by 

wretched pouertie 
Some in bayle & bondage / and some at 

libertie 
Wt other moo gyftes / of ffortune 
varyable 
Some pleasaunt / some mean / and some 
onprofitable 

3 
But after dewe serche / and better ad- 
visement 15 
I knewe by reason / that oonly god 

above 
Rewlithe thos thynges / as is most con- 
venyent 
The same devydyng / to man for his be- 
hove 

Wherfore dame reason / did me per- 

swade & move / 
To be content / wt this my small es- 
tat 20 
And in this matter no more to vestigate / 


4 
Whan I had debated / all thyng in my 
mynd 
I well considered / myn obscure blynd- 
nes 
So that non excuse could I se or fynd 
But that my tyme / I spend in Idelnes 25 
ffor this me thought / and trew it is 
doughtles 
That sence I ame a reasonable creature 
I owght my reason & wyt to put in vre / 


5 

Than of what matter / myght I devise 
& wright 

To vse my tyme / and wytte to exer- 
cyse 30 

Sythe most men haue / no pleasure or 
delight 

In any history / wtout it sownd to 
vice / 

Alas shold I than / that ame not yong 
attise 

Wt lewed ballates faynt hartes to synne 

Or flatter estates / some fauour of them 
to wynne / 35 


6 
What than shall I wright / the noble 
doughtynes 


Of estates / that vsed is nowe a dayes 

I shall than lake just matter / for gredy 
couetousnes 

Of vayn ryches / which hathe stopt all 
the wayes 

Of worthy Chyvallry / that now dayly 
sore dekayes 40 

And yet thoughe some behaue them nobly 

Yet many ther be / that dayly dothe the 
contrarye 


ffor some lovyth meate fynne & delicious 

And some baudye brothes / as ther edu- 
casion hathe be 

So some lovethe vertue / and some tales 
vicious 45 

Sewerly suche tales / gett ye non of me 

But to eschewe all Ociosite 

Of ffortunes fykellnes / here after shall 
I wright 

Howe greatest estates / she ouerthrowyth 
by myght 


8 
Thoughe I onworthe this tragedy do be- 
gyne 50 
Of pardon I pray / the reders in meke 
wyse 
And to correct / where they se fault 
therin 


Reputyng it for lake / of connyng ex- 
cercyse 
The cause that moved me / to this enter- 


price 
Specyally was / that all estates myght 
se 55 
What it is to trust to ffortunes mutabyl- 
ite 


9 

Wt pen & ynke I toke this worke in 
hand 

Redy to wright the deadly dole / & who- 
full playnt 

Of them whos fall the world dothe vn- 
derstand 

Which for feare made my hart to 
faynt / 60 

I must wright playn / colours haue I 
none to paynt 

But termes rude / ther dolowrs to compile 

An wofull playnt must haue an wofull 
style 


41. Some inserted by scribe with a caret, as is 
dothe in 42. 


372 GEORGE CAVENDISH 


10 
To whome therfore / for helpe shall I 
nowe call 
Alas Caliope my callyng wyll vtterly re- 
fuse / 65 
ffor mornyng dities / and woo of for- 
tunes falle 


Caliope dyd neuer / in hir dyties vse 
Wherfore to hir I myght my selfe abuse 
Also the musis that on Parnasus syng 
Suche warblyng dole / did neuer tempor 


stryng 70 
11 
Nowe to that lord / whos power is 
celestiall 


And gwydyth all thyng of sadnes and 
of blysse 

Wt humble voyce / to the I crie & call 

That thou woldest direct / my sely pen 
in this 

ffor wantyng of thy helpe / no marvell 


thoughe I mysse 75 
And by thy grace / thoughe my style be 
rude 


In sentence playn / I may full well con- 
clude 


2 

Nowe by thy helpe / this history I wyll 
begyn 

And ffrome theffect varie nothyng at all 

ffor if I shold / it ware to me great 
synne 80 

To take vppon me a matter so substan- 
cyall 

So waytie so necessarie of ffame per- 
petuall 

And thus to be short / oon began to 
speke / 

Wt deadly voyce / as thoughe his hart 
wold breke / 


ffinis Quod G. C. 


Le Historye Cardinalis Eboracensis 


13 
O ffortune / quod he / shold I on the 
complayn 85 
Or of my necligence that I susteyn this 


smart 

Thy doble visage hathe led me to this 
trayn 

ffor at my begynnyng / thow dydest ay 
take my part 

Vntill ambysion had puffed vppe my hart 


Wt vaynglory.honor.and vsurped dig- 
nyte 
fforgettyng cleane my naturall mendycitie 


14 
ffrom pouertie to plentie whiche nowe I 
se is vayn 
A cardynall I was and legate de latere 
A bysshope & archebysshope / the more 
to crease my gayn 
Chauncelor of Englond / fortune by hir 
false flatere 95 
Dyd me avaunce / and gave me suche 
auctorytie 
That of hyghe & lowe I toke on me the 
charge 
All Englond to rewle / my power ex- 
tendyd large 
15 


Whan ffortune wt fauour had sett me 
thus alofte 

I gathered me riches / suffisaunce cowld 
not content 100 

My fare was superfluous / my bed was 
fynne & softe 

To haue my desiers / I past not what I 
spent 

In yerthe suche aboundaunce / ffortune 
had me lent 

Yt was not in the world / that I cowld 
well requyer 

But fortune strayt wayes / dyd graunt 
me my desier 105 

16 


My byldynges somptious / the roffes wi 
gold & byse 

Shone lyke the sone / in the myd day 
spere 

Craftely entayled / as connyng cowld 
devyse 

Wt images embossed / most lyvely did 
appere 

Expertest artificers / that ware bothe 
farre & nere II0 

To beatyfie my howssys / I had them at 
my wyll 

Thus I wanted nought / my pleasurs to 
fullfyll / 

17 

My Galleryes ware fayer / bothe large & 
long 

To walke in theme / whan that it lyked 
me best 

My gardens swett / enclosed wt walles 
strong II5 


THE METRICAL VISIONS 373 


Enbanked wt benches / to sytt & take my 
rest 

The knottes so enknotted / it cannot be 
exprest 

Wt arbors and alyes / so pleasaunt & 
so dulce 

The pestylent ayers / wt flauours to re- 
pulse 

18 

My chambers garnysht / wt aras fynne 

Importyng personages / of the lyvelyest 
kynd 121 

And whan I was disposed / in them to 
dynne 

My clothe of estate / there redy did I 
fynd 

ffurnysshed complett accordyng to my 
mynd 

The subtill perfumes / of muske and 
swett amber 125 

There wanted non / to perfume all my 
chamber 


19 
Plate of all sortes / most curiously 
wrought 
Of facions newe / I past not of the old 
No vessell but syluer byfore me was 
brought 
ffull of dayntes vyaundes / the some can- 
not be told 130 
I dranke my wynne alwayes in syluer & 
in gold 
And dayly to serue me / attendyng on 
my table 
Seruauntes I had / bothe worsh(i) pfull 
& honorable 
20 
My crossis twayn / of siluer long & 
greate 
That dayly byfore me / ware caried 
hyghe 135 
Vppon great horses / opynly in the strett 
And massie pillers / gloryouse to the eye 
Wt pollaxes gylt / that no man durst 
come nyghe 
My presence / I was so pryncely to be- 
hold 
Ridyng on my mule / trapped in siluer 
& in gold 140 
21 
My legantyn prerogatyve / was myche to 
myn avayle 


136. The scribe inserts the with a caret; so the 
second in of 140. 


By vertue wherof / I had thys highe pre- 
emynence 

All vacant benefices / I dyd them strayt 
retaylle 

Presentyng than my clarke / asson as I 
had intellygence 

I preventid the patron / ther vaylled no 
resistence 145 

All bysshoppes and prelattes / durst not 
oons denay 

They doughtyd so my power / they 
myght not dysobey 


22 

Thus may yow se / howe I to riches 
did attayne 

And wt suffisaunce / my mynde was 
not content 

Whan I had most / I rathest wold com- 
playn 150 

ffor lake of good / alas howe I was 
blent 

Where shall my gatheryng / and good be 
spent 

Somme oon perchaunce / shall me therof 
discharge / 

Whome I most hate / and spend it owt at 
large 


23 

Syttyng in Jugement / parcyall ware my 
domes 155 

I spared non estate / of hyghe or lowe 
degree 

I preferred whome me lyst / exaltyng 
symple gromes 

Above the nobles / I spared myche the 
spiritualtie 

Not passyng myche / on the temperaltie 

Promotyng suche / to so hyghe es- 
tate 160 

As vnto prynces / wold boldly say chek 
mate / 


24 
Oon to subdewe / that did me allwayes 
fauour 
And in that place an other to auaunce 
Ayenst all trewthe / I did my besy labor 
And whilest I was workyng / witty 
whiles in fraunce 165 
I was at home supplanted / where I 
thought most assuraunce 
Thus who by fraud / ffraudelent is found 
ffraude to the defrauder / wyll aye re- 
bound 


374 GEORGE CAVENDISH 


25 
Who workyth fraude / often is disceyved 
As in a myrror / ye may beholde in 
me 170 
ffor by disceyt / or I had it perceyved 
I was dissayved / a guerdon met parde 
ffor hyme that wold / ayenst all equyte 
Dysseyve the innocent / that innocent 
was in deade 
Therfore justice of justice / ayenst me 
must procede 175 
26 
ffor bye my subtill dealyng / thus it came 
to passe 
Cheafely disdayned / ffor whome I toke 
the payn 
And than to repent / it was to late alas 
My purpose I wold than haue chaynged 
fayn 
But it wold not be / I was perceyved 
playn 180 
Thus venus the goddesse / that called is 
of love 
Spared not wt spight / to bryng me 
frome above / 
Za 
Alas my souerayn lord / thou didest me 
avaunce 
And settest me vppe in thys great pompe 
& pryde 
And gayest to me thy realme in gouern- 
aunce 185 
Thy pryncely will / why did I sett a 
side 
And folowed myn owen / consideryng 
not the tyde 
Howe after a floode / (an) ebbe com- 
mythe on a pace 
That to consider / in my tryhumphe / 
I lakked grace / 


Nowe fykkell fortune / torned hathe hir 


whele 190 
Or I it wyst all sodenly / and down she 
dyd me cast 


Down was my hed / and vpward went 
my heele 

My hold faylled me / that I thought suer 
& fast 

I se by experyence / hir fauour dothe 


not last 
ffor she full lowe nowe hathe brought 
me vnder 195 


188. MS reads and ebbe. 


Thoughe I on hir complayn alas it is no 
wonder 
29 


I lost myn honour my treasure was me 
berafte 

ffayn to avoyd / and quykly to geve 
place 

Symply to depart for me no thyng was 
lafte 

Wtout penny or pound / I lyved a certyn 
space / 200 

Vntill my souerayn lord / extendyd to 
me hys grace 

Who restored me sufficient / if I had 
byn content 

To maynteyn myn estate / bothe of lond 
& rent 

30 

Yet notwtstandyng / my corage was so 
hault 

Dispight of myn ennemyes / rubbed me 
on the gall 205 

Who conspired together / to take me wt 
asault 

They travelled wtout triall to geve me 
a fall 

I therfore entendyd / to trie my frendes 
all 

To forrayn potentates wrott my letters 


playn 

Desireng ther ayd / to restore me to 
fauour agayn 210 

31 

Myn ennemyes perceyvyng / caught ther- 
of dysdayn 

Doughtyng the daynger / dreamed on the 
dought 

In councell consultyng / my sewte to 
restrayn 

Accused me of treason / and brought it 
so abought 

That travellyng to my triall / or I could 
trie it owte 215 

Deathe wt his dart / strake me for the 


nons 
In Leycester full lowe / where nowe 
lyethe my boons 


32 
Loo nowe may you se / what it is to 
trust 
In wordly vanytes / that voydyth wt the 
wynd 


The scribe has inserted, with a caret, it in 214, 
nowe in 217- 


THE METRICAL VISIONS 375 


ffor deathe in a moment / consumyth all 
to dust 220 

No honor . no glory / that euer man 
cowld fynd 

But tyme wt hys tyme / puttythe all owt 
of mynd 

ffor tyme in breafe tyme / duskyth the 
hystory 

Of them that long tyme / lyved in glory 


33 

Where is my Tombe / that I made for 
the nons 225 

Wrought of ffynne Cooper / that cost 
many a pound 

To couche in my Carion / and my rotten 
boons 

All is but vaynglory / nowe haue I 
found 

And small to the purpose / whan I ame 
in the ground 

What dothe it avaylle me / all that I 
haue 230 

Seyng I ame deade / & layed in my 
grave / 

34 

ffare well Hampton Court / whos ffound- 
er I was 

ffarewell Westmynster place / nowe a 
palace royall 

ffarewell the Moore / lett Tynnynainger 
passe 

ffarewell in Oxford / my Colege Cardy- 
nall 235 

ffarewell in Jpsewich / my Scole gramat- 
icall 

Yit oons ffarewell I say / I shall you 
neuer se 

Your somptious byldyng / what nowe 
avayllethe me 


35 

What avayllyth / my great aboun- 
daunce 

What is nowe laft / to helpe me in thys 
case 240 

Nothyng at all / but dompe in the 
daunce / 

Among deade men / to tryppe on the 
trace / 

And for my gay housis / nowe haue I 
this place 


To lay in my karcas / wrapt in a shette 
Knytt wt a knott / att my hed and my 
feete 245 


36 

What avaylleth / nowe my ffetherbeddes 
soit 

Shettes of raynes / long large & wyde 

And dyuers devysis / of clothes chaynged 
oft 

Or vicious chapleyns / walkyng by my 
syd 

Voyde of all vertue / fulfilled wt pryde 

Whiche hathe caused me / by report of 


suche fame / 251 
ffor ther myslyvyng / to haue an yll 
name / 
of, 
This is my last complaynt / I can say you 
no moore 


But farewell my seruaunt / that faythe- 
full hathe be 

Note well thes wordes / quod he / I 
pray the therfore 255 

And wright them thus playn / as I haue 
told them the 

All which is trewe / thou knowest it 
well parde 

Thou faylledest me not / vntill that I 
dyed 

And nowe I must depart / I may no 
lenger byde / 


ffinis 
Thauctor G. C. 
38 
Whan he his tale had told / thus in 
sentence 260 


His dolorous playnt / strake me to the 
hart 

Pytie also moved me / to bewayll his 
offence 

And wt hyme to wepe / whan I did 
aduert 

In his aduersyte / howe I did not de- 
parte 

Tyll mortall deathe / had gevyn hyme 
his wou(n)d 265 

Wt whome I was present / and layed 
hyme in the ground 


Whan I had wept / and lamentyd my 
ffyll 

Wt reason perswaded / to hold me con- 
tent 

I aspied certyn persons / commyng me 


tyll 
Strayngely disguysed / that grettly did 
lament 270 


376 GEORGE CAVENDISH 


And as me semed / this was ther entent 
On ffortune to complayn / ther cause not 


slender 
And me to requyer ther ffall to re- 
member 
* * * * * * 


The Erle of Surrey 


158 
What avauntage had I to be a dukes 
heyr TI05 
Endowed wt suche qualities / as fewe in 
my tyme 
Lakkyng no thyng / that nature myght 
repayr 
In dewe proporcyon / she wrought hathe 
euery lyne 
Assendyng ffortunes whele / made lyke 
to clyme 
Syttyng in myn abode / supposyng to 
sitt fast III0 
Wt a sodeyn tourne she made me dissend 
as fast 
159 


Whoo trustith in honor / and settythe 
all hys lust 

In wordly riches / hauyng of theme 
aboundaunce 

Lett hyme beware / and take good hede 
he must 

Of subtill ffortune / wt dissemblyng 
countenaunce III5 

ffor whan she smylyth / than hathe she 
least assuraunce 

ffor the fflatteryng world / dothe often 
them begyle 

With suche vayn vanyties / alas / alas / 
the whyle / 


160 

I haue not only / my self nowe ouer- 
throwen 

But also my ffather / wt heares old & 
hoore 1120 

Allthoughe his actes marsheall be right 
welle knowen 

Yet was myn offence / taken so passyng 
sore 

That I nedes must dye / and he in prison 
for euermore 

Shall still remayn / ffor it wyll not 
avaylle 


1111. MS crosses out she. 
1116. She is inserted with caret before Jeast. 


All his great conquestes / wherin he did 


prevayle / 1125 
161 

O Julyus Cesar / O thou myghty con- 
queror 

What myght thy conquestes & all thy 
victorye 

The prevayle / that of Rome was Em- 
peroure 

Whos prowes yet remaynyth / in mem- 
orye 

Whan Brewtus Casseus / wt ffalce con- 
spyracye II30 


Ayenst the in the Capitoll / did contend 

Than all thy worthynes / could the not 
defend 

162 

Also Scipio of Affrican / that for the 
co (m)en wele 

Of Rome the Empier / the Citie beyng 
in distresse 

Lykly to be subdewd / than euery dele 

By Anyballes / valyaunt hardynes 1136 

And dyuers noble victoryes as the his- 
tory dothe expresse 

That he atchyved / to the honor of the 
town 

Cowld not hyme prevaylle / whan ffor- 
tune lyst to frown 


163 

Thes myghty Champions / thes valyaunt 
men 1140 

Who for the publyke whele / travelled 
all theyr lyfe 

Regarded not ther ease / nowther where 
or when 

But most valyauntly / wt corage inten- 
tyfe 

Defendyd the wele publyke / ffrome all 
myschyfe 

Yet was ther nobles / put in oblyvion 

And by matters conspired / brought to 
confusion 1146 

164 

Loo the reward alas that men shall haue 

ffor all ther travelles in ther dayes old 

Wt small spot / ther honor to deprave 

Alas it causithe full often / mens hartes 
to be cold 1150 

Whan suche chaunces / they do behold 

How for oon offence / a thousaund con- 
questes valyaunte 

Can haue no place ther lyves make war- 
raunt 


THE METRICAL VISIONS 377 


165 

Therfore noble ffather / hold your self 
content 

And wt your Captyfe lyve / be ye no 
thyng dysmayd II55 

ffor you may se / in historys playn & 
evydent 

That many noble persons / as ye are 
hathe byn dekayed 

The chaunce therfore of ffortune / nedes 
must be obeyed / 

And perpetuall prisonment / here shalbe 
your Gwerdon 

And dethe for my desertes / wtout re- 


myse & pardon 1160 
166 
ffor all my knowlege / wysdome & sci- 
ence 


That god hathe me endowed / all other 
to precell 

Gave me here / but small preemynence / 

All thoughe some ware aduaunced in the 
comen wele / 

ffrome basse estate / as experience 
dothe tell T165 

ffor suche vertues / as vices in me ac- 
compted were 

Caused me to be doughted / and in great 
feare / 

167 

That thyng which in some / deseruyth 
commendacion 

And hyghly to be praysed / as verteus 
commendable 

Beyng estemed therfore / worthy exalta- 


cion 1170 
And to be auaunced / to dygnyties hon- 
orable 


I assure yow ware to me / nothyng prof- 
etable 

ffor suche some tyme / as are but vayn 
and idell 

Disdaynythe all them / that owght to 
rewle the bridell 


168 
Therfor ffarewell / my peers / of the 
noble sect II75 
Desiryng you all / my fall for to be hold 
Lett it a myrror be / that ye be not 
enfecte 
Wt ffolyshe wytte / wherof be not to 
bold 


My warnyng to yow / is more worthe 
than gold 


An old prouerbe there is / which trewe 
is at thys day 1180 

The warned is halfe armed / thus I 
hard men saye / 


169 
I thought of no suche chaunce / as nowe 
to me is chaunced 
I trusted so my wytt / my power & myn 
estate 
Thynkyng more rather / highly to be 


auaunced 
Than to be deposed / as I haue byn but 
late / 1185 


Be it right or wrong / loo I haue lost my 
pate 

Ye se thend / of many noble estates 

Take a vowe of me / & of some your 
late mattes 


170 
Thauctor G. C. 

Wt that he vanysshed / I wyst not 
whether 

But a way he went / and I was left 
alone 1190 

Whos wordes and talke I gathered them 
together 

And in this sentence rewde / wrott them 
euerychone 

Yet was my hart with sorowe full woo- 
begon 

So noble a yong man / of wyt & excel- 
lence / 

To be condempned / for so small of- 
fence TI95 


[Three stanzas of Lenvoy de le auctor 
follow, then :—] 


174 
Lauctor G. C. 

Intendyng here to end / this my symple 
worke 

And no further to wade / in this on- 
savery lake 

My penne was fordulled / my wyttes be- 
gan to lurke / 

I sodenly trembled / as oon ware in a 
brake 1220 

The cause I knewe not / that I shold 
tremble & shake 

Vntill dame fame I hard / blowe hir 
trembleng trompe 

Which woofull blaste brought me / in 
a soden dompe 


378 GEORGE CAVENDISH 


175 

Dame ffame I asked / why blowe ye your 
trom(p)e so shryll 

In so deadly a sownd / ye make my hart 
full sorry 1225 

She answered me agayn / and sayd / 
Sir so I wyll 

Deade is that royall prynce / the late 
viijth Harry 

Wherfor adewe / I may no lenger tarry 

ffor thorowghe the world I must / to 
blowe this deadly blast 

Alas thes woofull newes / made my hart 


agaste / 1230 
176 

I went my wayes / and drewe my self 
aside 

Alon to lament the deathe of this royall 
kyng 

Parceyvyng right well / deth wyll stope 
no tyde 


Wt kyng or kaysier / therfore a wonder- 
ouse thyng 

To se howe will in them dothe raygn 
makyng ther reconyng 1235 

Euer to lyve / as thoughe deathe ware 
of them a feard 

To byd them chekmate / & pluke them 
by the berd / 


177 
To ffynysshe thys worke / I did my self 
dispose 
And to conclude the same / as ye byfore 
haue red 
I leaned to my chayer / entendyng to re- 
pose 1240 


In a slepie slomber I fille / so hevy was 
my hed 

Morpheus to me appered / and sayd he 
wold me lede 

My spyrittes to revyve / and my labor 
to degest 

Wt whome ffantzy was redy / and stayed 
in my brest / 


178 
ffantzy by & bye / led me as I thought 
To a palice royall / of pryncely Edy- 
fice 1246 
Plentyfully furnysshed / of riches it 
lacked nought 
Astonyed not a littill / of the wofull 
cries 


1224. MS writes shyrll. 
1240. Singer reads on my chayer. 


Which I hard there / wt many wepyng 
eyes 

Euer as we passed / frome place to 
place / 1250 

I beheld many a pityfull bedropped face 


179 

So that at the last / to tell you playn & 
right 

We entred a chamber / wt out light of 
the day 

To whome wax candelles gave myche 

light 

Wherin I parceyved a bed of royall ar- 
ray 1255 

To the which I approced / makyng no de- 
lay / 

Wherin a prynce lay syke / wt a deadly 
face 

And cruell Attrophos standyng in that 
place / 

180 

Clotho / I aspied also / that in hyr hand 
did support 

A distaffe wherof the stuffe / was well 
nyghe spent 1260 

Which lacheses dothe spynne / as poetes 
dothe report 

Drawyng the lyvely thred / tyll Attropos 
had hent 

Hir sharped sheres / wt a full consent / 

To shere the thred / supporter of hys 


lyfe 
Ayenst whome ther botyth / no preroga- 
tyfe 1265 


181 

Attendyng on his person / was many a 
worthy grome 

Where he lay syke / to whome syknes 
sayd chekmate / 

All thoughe he ware a prynce / of highe 
renome 

Yet syknes regardyd not hys Emperyall 
estate 

Tyme approched / of his lyfe the fynall 
date / 1270 

And Attrophos was prest / his lyves 
thred to devyde 

Hold thy hand / quod he / and lett thy 
stroke abyde / 


182 
Henricus Rex loquetus ad mortem 
Geve me leve Attrophos / my self for to 
lament 


THE METRICAL VISIONS 3/9 


Spare me a lityll / for nature makes me 


sewe 

The ffleshe is frayle / and lothe for to 
relent 1275 

ffor deathe wt lyfe cannot be shett in 
mewe 

They be contrariaunt / there is no thyng 
more trewe 


ffor lyfe ayenst dethe / allwayes dothe 
rebell 
Eche man by experience / naturally this 
can tell / 
183 


ffrome Clothos distafe / my lyvely stuffe 
is spent 1280 

Whiche Lachesis the slender thred hathe 
sponne 

Of my lyfe Emperyall / and thou At- 
trophos hast hent 

The sharped sheres / to shere my feble 
throme 

That the warbeled spendell / no more 
abought shold ronne / 

And of my regall lyfe / thus hast thou 


great disdayn 1285 
So slender a thred / so long shold it 
susteyn 
184 


But leave of Attrophos / thou nedes not 
make suche hast 

My symple lyfe / wt vigor to confound 

Thy sheryng sheres / thou shalt but 
spend in wast 

ffor the spyndelles end / alredy is at the 
ground 1290 

The thred ontwynned cannot more be 
twound 

Great folly in the / that takes suche idell 
paynne 

To slee that thyng / that is all redy 
slayn / 

185 


Wherfore leave of Attrophos / for end 
of lyfe is deathe 

as ct I se / is end of worldes 

1295 

What Tale thou wyn than / to stope my 
faynted brethe 

Sythe well thou knowest / whan that 
thou hast me slayn 

To welle or woo I shall oons rise agayn 

Thoughe in thy fury / my lyfe nowe thou 
devoure 

To sle me agayn / it shall not lie in thy 
power 1300 


186 
Slee me not Attrophos but lete spyndell 
ronne 
Which long hathe hanged / by a feoble 
lynne / 


ffor whan Lachesis / hir fyned fflees 
hathe sponne 

The spyndell woll fall / thou seest well 
wt thyn eyen 

No stuffe is laft / agayn the thredes to 


twn 1305 
So slender it is / that wt oon blast of 
wynd 


y: 
The thred will breke / it is so slakley 
twynd 
187 
But nowe alas / that euer it shold befall 
So famous a prynce / of ffame so notable 
That ffame wt defame / shold the same 
appall 1310 
Or cause my concyence / to be so on- 
stable 
Which for to here / is wonderous lament- 
able 
Howe for the love / and fond affeccion 
Of a symple woman / to worke all by 
collusion 
188 
I brake the bond of mariage / and did 
my self inclyne 1315 
To the love of oon in whome was all my 
felicitie 
By means whereof / this realme is 
brought in rewyn 
Yet notwtstandyng / I nedes wold serue 
my ffantzye 
So that all my lust / in hir was ffyxt as- 
suredly 
Which for to colour / I colored than my 
case 1320 
Makyng newe lawes / the old I did de- 
face / 
189 
Wt coloure of concience / I colored my 
pretence 
Entendyng therby / to sett my bond at 
lybertie 
My lustes to frequent / and haue of them 
experience 
Sekyng but my lust / of onlefull lech- 


erye 1325 
Wherof the slaunder / remaynythe still 
in me 


So that my wilfullnes / and my shamfull 
trespace 


380 GEORGE CAVENDISH 


Dothe all my magestie / and noblenes de- 


face 
190 
Whan Venus veneryall / of me had 
domynacion 
And blynd Cupydo / my purpose did 
auaunce 1330 
Than willfull lust / thoroughe Indiscres- 


sion 
. Was chosyn Juge to hold my ballaunce 
Of onlefull choyse / by whos onhappie 
chaunce 
Yt hathe darked my honour / spotted 
fame & glory 
Which causithe my concience / oft to be 
full sory 1335 
191 
Alake therfore / greatly I ame ashamed 
That thus the world / shold knowe my 
pretence 
Wherwt my magestie / is slaundred & 
defamed 
Thoroughe this poysoned / lecherous 
offence 
Which hathe constrayned / by mortall 
violence 1340 
So many to dye / my purpose to attayn 
That nowe more grevous / suerly is my 
payn / 
192 
Thoughe I ware myghty / and royall in 
pieusaunce 
Havyng all thyng / in myn owen demayn 
Yet was my reason / vnder the obey- 
saunce 1345 
Of fflesshely lustes / fetered in Venus 
chayn 
ffor of my lust / will was my souerayn 
My reason was bridelled / so by sen- 
sualite 
That wyll rewled all / wtout lawe & 
equytie 
193 
After I forsoke / my first most lawfull 
wyte 1350 
And toke an other / my pleasure to full- 
fill 
I chaynged often / so inconstant was 
my lyfe 
Deathe was the meade / of some that 
did non ill 
Which oonly was / to satisfie my wyll 
I was so desirous / of newe to haue my 
lust 1355 


Yet could I fynd / non lyke vnto the 
furst / 
194 


In excellent vertues and wyfely trouthe / 

In pryncely prudence / and whomanly 
port 

Which ffloryshed in hir / evyn frome 
hyr youthe 

So well disposed / and of so sad a sort 

To all men it was / no small comfort 

And synce the tyme / that I did hir de- 
vorse 

All Englond lamentithe / and hathe ther- 
of remorse 

195 


Hir to commende & prayse / evyn at 
the ffull 

As she was worthy / it lyethe not in my 
myght 1365 

My wytt and connyng / is to grosse & 
dull 

Hir worthynes / in so rude a stile to 
wright 

ffor she may be compared / evyn of 
very right 

Vnto pacient Greseld / if euer there ware 
any 

ffor lyke hyr paciente / there hathe not 
regned many: 1370 

196 

What inconvenyence / haue I nowe 
brought to passe / 

Thoroughe my wilfullnes / of willfull 
necligence 

Wtin thys realme / fare frome the welthe 


it was 

Yt nedes not therfore / to geve you in- 
telligence 

ffor you haue fillt the smart / and the 
indygence / 1375 

Wherfore to make / any ferther declara- 
cion 

Yt ware to me / but an idell occupa- 
cion / 

197 

ffor all my conquestes / and my royall 

powers 


My plesunt tryhumphes / and my ban- 
kettyng chere 

My pryncely port / and my youthfull 
powers 1380 

My great liberalites / vnto my darlynges 
dere 

My Emperyall magestie / what ame I the 
nere 


THE METRICAL VISIONS 381 


ffor all my great aboundaunce / no 
thyng can me defend 

ffrome mortall dethe / all fleshe must 
haue an end 


98 
Who had more Joyes / who had more 


pleasure 1385 

Who had more riches / who had more 
abondaunce 

Who had more joyelles / who had more 
treasure 

Who had more pastyme / who had more 
dalyaunce 

Who had more ayed / who had more 
allyaunce 

Who had more howsis / of pleasure & 
disport 1390 


Who had suche places as I for my com- 
fort 


199 
All thyng to reherce / wherin I toke 
delight 
A long tyme I assure you / wold not 
suffice / 


What avayllythe nowe / my power & 
my myght 

Synce I must dye / & shall no more 
aryse 1395 

To raygn in this world / nor seen wt 
bodely eyes 

But as a clott of claye / consume I must 
to dust 

Whome you haue seen / to raygn in 
welthe & lust / 


200 

ffarewell my nobles / ffarewell my pre- 
lattes pasturall 

ffarwell my noble dames / ffarewell you 
pieuselles fayer 1400 

ffarewell my Citezens / ffarewell my 
Comens all / 

ffarewell my howsses / where I was wont 
repayer 

ffarewell my gardens / ffarewell the 
pleasaunt ayer 

ffarewell the world / ffarewell eche crea- 


ture 
ffarewell my ffrendes / my lyfe may no 
more endure / 1405 


201 
Adewe myn Impe / adewe my relyke 
here 
Adewe my sonne Edward / sprong of the 
royall race / 


Of the wight roose and the rede / as it 
may well appere 

Lord god I beseche the / to send hyme 
of thy grace 

Prosperously to raygne / and long to 


enioy my place / 1410 
To thy will & pleasure and the comen 
welthe / 


Justly here to gouerne / in great Joy 

& helthe / 
202 
Lauctor G. C. 

Wt that I sawe his brethe / fast con- 
sume away 

And lyfe also / allthoughe he ware a 
kyng / 

Whan deathe was come / nedes he must 
obeye 1415 

ffor dethe is indyfferent / to eche crea- 
ture lyvyng 

He sparithe none / all is to hyme oon 
rykconyng / 

All estates by deathe must end / there 
is none other bootte 

Loo here nowe I lie / quod he / vnder 
nethe your foote / 


203 

Makyng thus an end / of his most dolor- 
ous talke / 1420 

I strayt awoke / owt of my sobbyng 
slomber 

Morpheus than forsoke me / and forthe 
began to walke 

But ffantzy wt me abode / who did me 
myche encomber 

Puttyng me in remembraunce / of the 
lamentable nomber 

Which in my slepe I sawe / wt euery 
circumstance / 1425 

Yt was no small greave / to my dull 
remembraunce / 


204 

And whan I degested / eche thyng as it 
was 

I cowld but lament / in my faythfull 
hart 

To se the want / of our wonted solas 

Wt whome I nedes must take suche 
equall part 1430 

And than to my remembraunce / I dyd 
agayn reuert 

Recountyng his noblenes / shortly to con- 
clude 


382 GEORGE CAVENDISH 


Wrott than thus his Epitaphe / in sen- An Achilles in presse 


tence brefe & rude / 


Epytaphe 
Victoryously didest rayn / 
The viiijth Herrye 
Worthy most souerayn 
Tenthe worthy worthy / 


A Jupiter of providence / 
A strengthe of Herculus 
A Mars of excellence / 
A paynfull Pirrus 


A Ceser of clemancye 
A Corage of Hector 10 
A Salomon in sapience 
An Armez of Arthore 


A Cicero in eloquence / 
A hardy Anyball / 

A Davyd in prudence / 
A Allexander liberall 


In gouernaunce Agamemnon 20 


A force of Sampson 
A Charlmayn in myght 
A Godfray of Bulloyn 
A Rowlond in fyght / 


An holy Phocion 

A contynent ffabricyus 
An intier Caton 

A pieusaunt Pompeyus 


A Marcus Marcellus 

A Sipio Affrican 30 
A Ceaser Julius 

An other Octauyan 


This beawtie of Britayne 
Reyned prosperously 

Of progeny Grecean 
Dissendyd lynyally 


Whos honour to magnefie 
The myghty power dyvyn 
Hathe chosen hyme for (thye) 


A Plato in peace Above the sterres to shyn 40 
Of beawtie an Absolon ffinis G. C. 
Troy. This however constitutes no Grecian 


8. Pirrus. Singer prints Janus. 
25-6. Praise of Henry VIII for the austerity 


of Phocion or the frugality of Fabricius is 
nearly as much out of place as for the 
clemency of Caesar, line 9. 

Grecean. Englishmen claimed descent from a 
mythical Brutus or Brut, a Trojan hero who 
found his way to Britain after the fall of 


39. 


inheritance. See note Garland 405. 

The MS reads thyn, which is at the extreme 
edge of the leaf. Singer printed thyn eie, 
probably thinking that eie, “aye,’”’ had been 
trimmed away. I prefer to consider that 
Cavendish meant ‘‘forthye,” i.e., therefore, 
and wrote thyn by attraction of the rime 
above and that approaching. 


\ 


/ 


MORLEY’S TRANSLATION OF PETRARCH’S TRIUMPH OF LOVE, 
BOOK I 
Henry Parker, eighth (or tenth?) baron Morley by right of his mother, born 


1476 and died 1556, was for years gentleman usher to Henry the Eighth, and 
resident at the royal court. His connection with both Wyatt and Surrey is note- 


worthy in view of his similar literary interests. His daughter Jane married George 


| 


viscount Rochford, cousin to Surrey and brother to Anne Boleyn, with whom 
Rochford suffered death; another daughter married Sir John Shelton, whose 
child Mary not only owned and annotated one of the few existing manuscripts of 
Wyatt’s poems, but has written her name at the foot of a page carrying the unique 
copy of his acrostic-poem on the name Sheltun. 

The similarity in literary interest among Wyatt, Surrey, and Morley has, 
however, not the smallest parallel in literary command. Morley read Italian, an 
accomplishment of which he was proud; and he executed numerous translations 
from Italian or from Latin, often presenting them to the princess Mary, King 
Henry’s eldest daughter. In the dedication to his prose translation of the Dream 
of Scipio, offered later to the ‘““Lady Mary suster” of Edward VI, Morley says 
that it had been his habit to send the princess each year either a Latin work by some 
Christian doctor or something translated by himself. Other translations by him, 
still existing in the gift-copies, are dedicated to Henry VIII or to a lord of the 
court ; these never have any literary value, but the prefixed addresses are of anti- 
quarian interest. That accompanying the prose translation of Boccaccio’s De Claris 
Mulieribus, offered to Henry VIII, was printed by Waldron in his Literary 
Museum, London, 1792, and reprinted thence by Paget Toynbee in his Dante in 
English Literature, i:33-35. That prefixed to the translation of Turrecremata’s 
commentary on Psalm 36, with an accompanying “sonnet”, was printed by Flugel 
in Anglia 13 :73-75, and is addressed to “the Lady Mary doughter” of Henry the 
Eighth. The prose translation of Plutarch’s life of Agesilaus was dedicated to 
Lord Cromwell; in it Morley tells Cromwell that the work “was translated from 
Greke into Latyn by Antony Tudartyn and drawen out of Latyn into Englishe 
by me Henry Lord Morley”. Other translations by. Morley, still in manuscript, 
are preserved in the British Museum collection of Royal MSS, as below. 

Morley’s Italian work has more interest for us than have his translations from 
the Latin ;—the prose rendering of Masuccio’s forty-ninth novel offered to Henry 
VIII, and the ambitious attempt in verse at Petrarch’s Trionfi, dedicated to the 
young Lord Maltravers, from which selection is here made. Maltravers, son of 
the earl of Arundel, is the same youth who is lamented in a poem printed in Tot- 
tel’s Miscellany, p. 118 of the Arber edition, and there said to be from Dr. Had- 
don’s Latin. The date of Maltravers’ death is in the text given as July 31 in the 
fourth year of Queen Mary, i.e., 1556, and he is stated to have been nineteen years 
old at the time. Since Morley himself died in 1556, aged eighty, and would hardly 
have offered the Petrarch-translation to a very young boy, he was probably over 
seventy when this work was undertaken. 

The Trionfi of Petrarch show, more than any other part of his writing, the 
influence of Dante’s Commedia. Like the Commedia, their dominant figure is that 
of the beloved lady; and there are constantly situations, choices of material, and 


[ 383 ] 


384 HENRY LORD MORLEY 


turns of phrase, which show study of Dante’s masterpiece. The Trionfi were very 
widely circulated, often with the Sonette and Rime. Hundreds of MSS exist, and 
after the first printing in 1470 the editions follow almost annually for years, The 
work was translated into French prose by La Forge and printed as early as 1514, 
with several reprintings. Whether one of those editions, or the verse-translation 
into French by Jean Maynier baron d’Oppéde, printed 1538, was seen by Morley, 
whether he used a manuscript or a print of the Italian, we do not know. He 
professes great admiration for Petrarch and for the Trionfi, which he places above 
all work done in any vulgar tongue,—without recognition of Dante. True, Dante 
is mentioned, and is given formal precedence over Petrarch, in Morley’s earlier 
dedication of the De Claris Mulieribus to King Henry; but Morley there says 
what we can well believe true, that there was at that time in Italy scarcely a prince 
or noble gentleman who had not Petrarch’s poems in his hands. It was Petrarch, 
in less degree Serafino, who caught the English ear of Wyatt, and who attracted 
that of many another Tudor poet. The Court of Love stencil, and the “conceits” 
of Petrarch, had more validity for the mid-sixteenth century than had Dante; 
only Sackville, in his Induction, printed 1563, turns to the stronger spirit. 

There is indeed in the Trionfi’s blending of allegory, pageant, classic legend, 
and worship of the Lady, as in its interlinking plan, just the sort of material and of 
structure which would please adolescent Tudor literature. The six Trionfi form a 
series. In the first of them, that of Cupid or Love, the onlooker sees humanity 
vanquished by the winged god, who is in turn compelled to yield to Chastity in the 
second of the poems, as Chastity falls before Death in the third, the Triumph of 
Death. Death is then triumphed over by Fame, who is later obliged to surrender 
to Time, and Time to Eternity or Divinity. Compare the appearance of Death, 
Fame, Time, and Eternity, one following another, at the close of Hawes’ Pastime 
of Pleasure. 

The whole was never completed; among the mass of existing MSS there are 
variants which show the poet retouching his work to the end of his life; but of a 
final version, or of any one recension as nearer definitive than the others, it is im- 
possible to speak. Our uncertainty as to which recension Morley used is increased 
by the freedoms and the inaccuracies of his handling, through which his original 
can often not be discerned; cf., e.g., lines 10, 131-2. If one compares his transla- 
tion with the two main types of Petrarchan text as edited by Appel, it will appear 
that Morley leans sometimes to one type, sometimes to the other. See for instance 
his lines 93, 229 with the Laurentian-Parma recension, and then his lines 8, 30, 
36, 200 with the Casanatensis type. 

A mere glance over Morley’s work will show the inadequacy of his imagina- 
tion and the poverty of his ear. His rhythmic peculiarities are not the conscious 
licences of the competent poet nor the struggles of a strong and gifted spirit with 
language ; they are the deaf stupidities of the complacently ignorant versifier. His 
value for the modern reader resides in the likenesses and differences between him 
and his contemporary and fellow-courtier Wyatt. On the one hand, both read 
Italian, both translated Petrarch, both found it difficult to adjust language to the 
pentameter line; one the other hand, Wyatt ventured into terza rima and the son- 
net, while Morley stayed by the couplet or prose. It is worth noticing not only 
that Wyatt moved better in his couplet than in his sonnets, and that he chose or 
modelled a sonnet-form clinched by a couplet, but that later translations of this 


PETRARCH’S TRIUMPH OF LOVE, BOOK I 385 


same Trionfo, in 1644 and in 1807, preferred the couplet. English has always 
leaned to the couplet-structure. 

In the Italian there are 160 lines of terza rima; the translation by Anna Hume 
in 1644 kept to the same number of verses, but that of Henry Boyd in 1807 runs 
to 196, that of Morley to 250 lines. Morley’s expansion is due in many cases to 
lines and half-lines of padding for rime’s sake; see note on line 16. But he also 
expands to display his knowledge, as in lines 21-24 with their picture of a Roman 
triumph, or in the biographical details added to Petrarch’s list of lovers, lines 200 ff. 
Mistranslations occur ; see notes on 103, 210, 229. 

I subjoin brief passages from the opening of the Hume and the Boyd trans- 
lations, to illustrate the difference in rhythmical flow. 


It was the time when I do sadly pay 

My sighs, in tribute to that sweet-sour day 

Which first gave being to my tedious woes; 

The sun now o’er the Bull’s horns proudly goes, 

And Phaeton had renew’d his wonted race; (1644) 


The fatal morning dawn’d, that brought again 

The sad memorial of my ancient pain; 

That day, the source of long-protracted woe, 

When I began the plagues of Love to know. 

Hyperion’s throne, along the azure field, 

Between the splendid horns of Taurus wheel’d; 

And from her spouse the Queen of Morn withdrew 

Her sandals, gemm’d with frost-bespangled dew. (1807) 


The whole of each version may be read in a volume of Petrarch’s sonnets, Tri- 
umphs, and other poems, translated by various hands, with a life of the poet by 
Thomas Campbell prefixed, London, 1859, again 1901. And it may be added that 
the Triumph of Death was translated into terza rima by Mary Sidney countess of 
Pembroke two generations later than Morley; her work is printed in PMLA 
27 47-75 by Frances Young. 

The present text is reprinted from Cawood’s edition pubd. during the reign 
of Mary, ca.1555; it was reprinted for the Roxburghe Club in 1887, and this 
canto, the first part of the “Triumphus Amoris”, was printed (with modernized or- 
thography) by G. F. Nott in his edition of Wyatt and Surrey, 1815, i: appendix 
36. Much of the dedication to Lord Maltravers is printed by Fltgel in Anglia 
13: 72-3 footnote; and in his Neuengl. Lesebuch i:111 Fliigel reprinted the twenty 
opening lines of this “canto”, from Cawood. Morley’s “sonnet” on the Psalms, 
printed by Fliigel, zbid., p. 110, and in Anglia as cited, p. 75, is given here from 
MS. Brit. Mus. Royal 18 A xv, the presentation copy to the Princess Mary. 


SELECT REFERENCE LIST XVII 


Wyatt’s poems are ed. by Miss Foxwell in two vols., London, 1913. 

Morley’s translations still in MS are listed in the Dict. Nat. Biog. article on him; see 
earlier, Walpole’s Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, London, 1759, i :92-96. 

The Masuccio novel and its dedication are printed by Brie in Archiv 124:46-57. 

Petrarch’s Trionfi are ed. by Appel, Halle, 1901. 


386 HENRY LORD MORLEY 


The Catalogue of Western MSS in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols., 
is of 1921. See, e.g., for Morley the Seneca in 17 A xxx, the Dream of Scipio 
in 18 A Ix, the Athanasius in 17 C xii. 

Two brief bits by Morley, the lines beginning “Neuer was I lesse alone”, and those 
beginning “All men do wisshe”, are printed by Fliigel in his Lesebuch, pp. 37-8, 
and also in Arber’s Surrey and Wyatt anthology, 1900, pp. 128-9. The latter 
was also printed in Bliss’ Athenae Oxon. i:118, the former in the British Bibliog- 
rapher, iv:107, and in Foxwell’s Wyatt, ii:162-3. The source of this stanza is 
discussed MLNotes 24 :54,123,226 and 34:122,441. Its theme is cited by Petrarch 
in his De vita solitaria as from Scipio and Cicero; Morley may have taken it 


from him. a) Wee LS eee 
[The Dedicatory Letter] 

Unto the mooste | towarde yonge gentle Lord Matrauers | sonne and heyre apparaunt 
to the worthy and noble | Earle of Arundel, your poore frende Henry Par | ker 
knyght, Lorde Morley, prayeth to God that | the vertue whiche doth floryshe in you 
in | this youre tender age, maye more and | more increase in you, to the comfort | of 
all that loue you, vnto the | laste age. 

The fables of Isope (mooste towarde younge Lorde) are not only had in com- 
mendation amonge the Philosophers, as with Plato, Aristotle, & diuerse other of ye 
moste excellent of them, but also the deuines, when in theyr preachynges there cometh 
to theyr purpose any matter, to rehearse to the rude people, they alledge the allegorye 
sence of them, to the muche edification of the hearers. I saye therfore, that amonge 
other his wyttye fables (not to you noble gentleman vnknowen) he telleth, how that 
the cocke scrapynge on a doungehill, found a precious stone, and when he sawe it, 
disdayninge, he spurned it from hym, sayinge, what haue I to do with the, thou 
canste not serue me to no kynde of vse, and so dispysynge it, left it where as it laye 
on the dongehyll styll. Euen so there be a nomber of that sorte, that percase when 
they shall eyther heare redde, or them selfe reade this excellent tryumphes, of this 
famous clercke Petrarca, shall lytle set by them, and peraduenture caste it from them, 
desyrynge rather to haue a tale prynted of Robyn Hoode, or some other dongehyll 
matter then of this, whiche I dare affirme, yea, and the Italians do the same, that the 
diuine workes set aparte, there was neuer in any vulgar speech or language, so notable 
a worke, so clerckely done as this his worke. And albeit that he setteth forth these 
syxte wonderfull made triumphes all to the laude of hys Ladye Laura, by whome he 
made so many a swete sonnet, that neuer yet no poete nor gentleman could amend, 
nor make the lyke, yet who that doth vnderstande them shall se in them comprehended 
al morall vertue, all Phylosophye, all story all matters, and briefely manye devyne 
sentences theologicall secretes declared. But alas who is he that will so reade them, 
that he wyl marke them, or what prynter wyll not saye, that he may winne more gayne 
in pryntynge of a merye ieste, then suche lyke excellente workes, suerlye (my good 
Lorde) very fewe or none, whyche I do lamente at my harte, consyderynge that aswel 
in French, as in the Italyan (in the whyche both tongues I haue some lytle knowledge) 
there is no excellente worke in the latyn, but that strayght wayes they set it forth in 
the vulgar, moost commonly to their kynges and noble prynces of theyr region and 
countreys: As one of late dayes that was grome of the chaumber with that renowmed 
and valyaunte Prynce of hyghe memorye, Fraunces the Frenche kynge, whose name 
I haue forgotten, that dydde translate these tryumphes to that sayde kynge, whyche 
he toke so thankefullye, that he gaue to hym for hys paynes an hundred crounes, to 
hym and to his heyres of inheritaunce to enioye to that value in lande for euer, and 
toke suche pleasure in it, that wheresoeuer he wente amonges hys precyous Iewelles, that 
booke was alwayes caryed with hym for his pastyme to loke vpon, and as much estemed 
by hym, as the rychest Diamonde he hadde: whiche sayde booke, when I sawe the 

From:—The tryumphes of Fraunces Petrarcke, translated out of Italian into English by Henrye Parker 


knyght, Lord Morley. [Colophon] Printed at London in Powles Churchyarde at the sygne of the Holy 
Ghost, by John Cawood, Prynter to the Quenes hyghnes. [After 1553]. 


PETRARCH’S TRIUMPH OF LOVE, BOOK I 387 


coppye of it, I thoughte in my mynde, howe I beynge an Englishe man, myght do 
as well as the Frenche man, dyd translate this sayde worke into our maternall tounge, 
and after much debatyng with my selfe, dyd as your Lordshyppe doth se, translate the 
sayde booke to that moost worthy kynge our late soueraygne Lorde of perpetuall 
memorye kynge Henrye theyghte, who as he was a Prynce aboue all other mooste 
excellente, so toke the worke verye thankefullye, merueylynge muche howe I coulde do 
it, and thynkynge verelye I hadde not doone it, wythoute helpe of some other, better 
knowynge the Italyan tounge then I: but when he knewe the verye treweth, that I 
hadde traunslated the worke my selfe, he was more pleased therewith then he was 
before, and so what his highnes dyd with it, is to me vnknowen, one thynge is, that 
I dyd it in suche hast, that doubtles in many places (yf it were agayne in my handes) 
I thynke I coulde well amende it, albeit that I professe, I haue not erred moche from 
the letter, but in the ryme, whiche is not possible for me to folow in the translation, 
nor touche the least poynt of the elegancy that this elegant Poete hath set forth in 
his owne maternall tongue. But as it is, if in the translation there be any thynge to be 
amended, or any wyll depraue it, I shall praye you (mooste noble younge Lorde) the 
very myrroure of al the yonge noble gentelmen of this realme in vertue, in learnynge, 
and in all other feates appertayning to such a Lorde as you be, to defende it a-agaynst 
those that will more by enuy then by knowledge depraue it, and then I do not feare 
but those that knowe and can speake the Italian, will beare with the simple translation, 
and commende the worke, as it is so muche commendable, that it can not be to dere 
bought, I desyre god noble yonge gentleman, to make the lorde Matrauers an olde gen- 
tleman, and | then thy worthy father the Earle of Arundell | my most speciall good 

Lorde and frend, shall make | an olde Earle and lyue | vsque in senium et senectum. 


Dizi | 


Henry Morelye. 


The first Chapter of the Tryumphe of Loue. 


In the tyme of the Renewinge of my sus- 
pyres 

By the swete remembraunce of my 
louely desyres 

That was the begynnynge of soo longe a 
payne 

The fayre Phebus the bull dyd attayne 

And warmyd had the tone and tother 


horne 5 
Wherby the colde wynter stormes were 
worne 


And Tytans chylde with her frostye face 
Ran from the heate to her aunciente 


place 

Loue, grefe, and complaynt, oute of rea- 
son 

Had brought me in such a case that sea- 
son 10 

That myne eyes closed, and I fell to 
reste 


The very Remedye to such as be oppreste 
And ther on the grene, as I reposed fast 
Sodenly me thought, as I myne eyes vp 


cast 
I sawe afore me a maruelous great 
lighte 15 


Wherin as well comprehend then, I 
myghte 


Was doloure ynough wyth smale sporte 
& play 

And thus in my dreame musyng, as I 
laye 

I sawe a great Duke victorious to beholde 

Tryumphyng on a chayre, shynyng as 
golde 20 

Muche after the olde auncient sage wyse 

That the bolde Romayns vsed in there 
guyse 

When to the Capytoll the vyctors were 
brought 

With right riche Robes curiously were 
wrought 

I that such sightes was not wont to se 25 

In this noyous worlde wherein I fynde 
me 

Uoyde from the olde valure & yet more 
in pryde 

Sawe comming towardes me ther on 
euery side 

Dyuerse men wyth straunge and queynte 
arraye 

Not vsyd amonge vs at this present daye 

Which made me wonder what persons 
thei shuld be 3I 

As one glad to learne, and some new 
thinges to se 


388 HENRY | LORD.’ MORLEY 


There sawe I a boye on a firye chayre on 


hyghte 

Drawen with foure coursers all mylke 
whight 

Wyth bowe in hande and arrowes sharpe 
& keene 35 

Against whome no shylde nor helme so 
sheene 


Myght in no wyse the mortale stroke 
wythstand 

When he shote wyth his most dreadfull 
hande 

To this also a straunge sight to se 

Two wynges vpon his shoulders had he 40 

Wyth coloures more then I can wryte or 
tell 

A thousande dyuers this I noted well 

And all the rest were nakyd to the skynne 

‘Aboute the chayre where that this boye 
was in 


Some laye there deade gapynge on the 
grounde 45 

Some with his dartes had taken meny a 
wound 

Some were prysoners and could not scape 
away 

But folowed styll the chayre nyght and 
day 

I that sawe this wonderfull straunge 
sight 

To know what it mente, dyde that I 
myght 50 


Tyll at the last I dyd perceaue and se 
My selfe to be amonge that company 
So had loue led me on that dawnce 
That as it lyked her, so must I take the 


chawnce 

I then among that great number in that 
place 55 

Lokyng here and there in eche mannes 
face 

Yf any of myne Acquayntaunce I coulde 
se 


But none was there except perchaunce 
that he 
By age or death or payne was chaunged 


quyte 

As that I neuer had hym knowen by 
syght 60 

Wyth folowing that great kyng in that 
houre 

That is the grounde and cause of all 
dolowre 


Thus all astonied as I loked here and 
there 
All sodenly afore me then dyd there ap- 


peare 
A shadowe much more sadde for to re- 
garde 65 


Than all the reste that I had sene or 
harde 

This sayd shadowe called me by name 

And sayd by loue is gotten all this fame 

Whereat I marueyled and sayde to hym 


agayne 
How knowest thou me, to learne I wold 
be faine 70 


For who thou arte I doo not knowe at all 

So wonderous derke is here thys ayre 
and all 

That I can nether perceaue nor yet well 
se 

What man thou art nor whence pt thou 
should be 

To that anone this shadowe to me sayde 

I am thy frende thou nedest not be dis- 
mayde 76 

And borne in Toscane where bu was 
borne perdye 

Thyne auncient frende if that thou lyst 
to se 

His wordes whiche that I knewe by 
dayes paste 

By his speche, I knewe hym at the last 8c¢ 

All though his face, I coulde not then 
well se 

And thus in talkyng together went we 

And he beganne and thus to me dyd 
saye 

It is right longe and thereto many a day 

That I haue loked the my frynde to se 85 

Amonge vs here in this our companye 

For thy face was to me a token playne 

That ones thou shouldest know loues 
payne 

To whome I made aunswere and sayde 

These wordes by me they cannot be de- 


nayde 90 
But the sorowe the daunger and the 
dreade 
That louers haue at the ende for theyr 
meade 


So put me in feare, that I left all asyde 
Leste that my seruyce should be cleane 


denyde 
Thus sayd I and when he well percey- 
ued 95 


Myne entention and my wordes conceyued 


es 


PETRARCH’S TRIUMPH OF LOVE, BOOK I 


Smylynge he sayde what flame of fyre 

Hath loue kyndled in thy hartys de- 
syre 

I vnderstode then lytle what he ment 

For his wordes vnto my heade then went 

As fyrme and fast sure set anone 01 

As they had bene prynted in a marbell 
stone 

And thus for the newe game that I be- 

_ gane 

I prayde hym tell me of verie gentlenes 
than 

What people these were that afore me 
went 105 

He aunswered bryfely to myne intente 

That I should knowe what they should be 

And be shortly one of theyr companye 

And that it was my destany and lotte 


‘That loue shoulde tye for me such a 


knotte IIo 
That I shoulde fyrst chaunge my heade 
to graye 


Or that I coulde vnclose that knot away 

But to fulfyll thy yonge desyre sayth he 

I shall declare what kynde of men they 
be 

And fyrst of the capteynes of them all 175 

His maner playne declare the I shall 

This is he that loue the worlde doth 
name 

Bytter as thou shalt well conceyue the 
same 

And much the more when the tyme shall 
be 

That thou shalt be amonge this companie 

A .meke chylde in his lustye yonge 
age I2I 

And in elde one all full of rage 

Well knoweth he that thys hath prouyd 

When thou by hym art heaued and 
shoued 

Thy selfe shall well see and vnder- 
stand 125 

What a maister thou hast then in hande 

This god hath his fyrst byrth of ydelnes 

Noryshed with mankyndes foly and wan- 
tones 

And of vayne thoughtes plesaunt and 
swete 

To a sage wyse man nothynge mete 130 

Callyd a god of the people most vayne 

All be it he geueth for theyr rewarde 
and payne 

Some the death forthwyth out of hande 

Some alonge tyme in miserye to stand 

To loue I say them that loues not hym 135 


389 


Fast tyed and fetred both cheke and 
chynne 

Nowe haue I declared to the this goddes 
feste 

Nowe wy! I tell the in order of the reste 

Hym that thou seest that so lordely doth 


go 
And leadeth wyth hym his loue also 140 


‘It is the valeaunte Cesar, Julius 


Wyth hym is quene Cleopatra the beuti- 
ouse 

She tryumphes of hym and that is good 
ryghte 

That he that ouercame the worlde by 
myght 

Should hymselfe ouer commen be 145 

By his loue euen as thou mayest se 

The next vnto hym is his sonne deare 

The great Augustus that neuer had peare 

That louyde more iustly then Cesar 
playne 

By request hys Lyuya he dyd obtayne 150 

The thyrde is the dyspytefull tyraunte 
Nero 

That furyously as thou seest doth go 

And yet a woman hym ouercame 

Wyth her regardes Lo she made hym 
tame 

Beholde the same, is the good Marcus 

Worthy to haue prayse for his lyfe ver- 
tuouse 156 

Full of phylosophy both the tounge and 
breste 

Yet for Fausteyn he standeth (at) ar- 
reste 

The tother two that stand hym by 

That loke both twayne so fearefullye 160 

The tone is Denyse the tother Alexander 

That well was rewarded for his sclaunder 

The tother was he that soore complayned 

Under Antander wyth teares vnfayned 

The death of Creusa and toke awaye 165 

The loue from hym as the poete doth 
saye 

That toke from Euander his sone deare 

Among the rest thou mayest se hym 
here 

Hast thou harde euer reason heretofore 

Of one that neuer would consent more 

To hys stepmothers foull and shamefull 
desires 171 

But flye from her syght and her attyres 

But wo alas that same chast honest mynde 

Was his death as thou mayst playnely 
fynde 


158. The printed text reads as instead of at. 


390 HENRY LORD MORLEY 


Because she chaunged hyr loue vnto hate 
Phedra she hyght that caused the de- 
bate 176 
And yet was it hyr owne Death also 
A sore punyshment vnto both them two 
To (Theseus) that deceyued Adryan 
Wherefore it is full often founde than 
That one that blameth another parde 181 
He hym selfe is more to blame then he 
And who so he be wythouten any doubte 
That by fraude or crafte doth go aboute 
Another that trusteth hym for to be- 


guyle 
Yt is good reason that wyth that selfe 
wyle 186 


He be seruyd wyth that same sawse 

Lo what it is a louer to be false, 

This is he the famouse worthy knyght 

That betwyxt two systers standeth vp- 
ryghte 190 

The tone by hym was cruelly slayne 

The tother his loue in ioye dyd remayne: 

He that goeth with hym in the route 

It is Hercules, the stronge, fierce, and 
stoute 

That loue caused to folowe hyr daunce: 

To other whiche in louynge had harde 
chaunce 

It is Achylles the Greke so bolde 

That for Polexemes loue dyed, as it is 
tolde. 

There mayst thou see also Demophone 

And Phylys hys loue, that sore dyd 
mone 200 

Hys absence, wherby that she dyed. 

Lo those that stande vpon the tother syde 

Is Iason, and Medea that for his loue 

Deceaued hyr father his trueth to proue 

The more vngentle is Jason in dede 205 

That gaue hyr suche rewarde for hyr 


mede. 

Hysyphyle foloweth and she doth wayle 
also 

For the barbarouse loue was taken hyr 
fro 


Next in ordre there commeth by and by 
He that hath the name moost excel- 
lently 210 
Of bewtye, and with hym commeth she 
That ouersone behelde his beutye 
Wherby ensued innumerable of harmes 
Thoroughe out the world by Mars 


charmes 
Beholde I praye the among the com- 
panye 215 


Enone complaynynge full heauely 


For Parys that dyd hyr falsly betraye 
And toke in hyr stede fayre Helen awaye 
Se also Menelaus the Grekysse kynge 
For his wyfe Helene in greate mourn- 
ynge 220 
And a the fayre Horestes for to 
ca 
And Laodome that standeth all apall 
ine for hyr love the good Protheosso- 
aus 
And argia the faythfull for Pollynisus 
Here I pray the, the greuous lament- 
ynges 225 
The syghes, the sorowes, and the bewayl- 
ynges 
Of the myserable louers in this place 
That are brought into so dolorous case 
That there spyrytes they are about to 
rendre 
Unto the fals God that is so sclendre 230 
I can not nowe tell the all the names 
That the false God of loue thus tames 
Not onely men that borne be mortall 
But also the hyghe greate Goddes super- 
nall 234 
Are here in this greate and darke presse 
What shulde I any more nowe rehearse 
Se where Uenus doth stande with Mars 
Whose heade and legges the yron doth 
enbrase 
And Pluto and Preserpyne on the other 
syde 
And Iuno the ielyous for all hyr pryde 
And Apollo with his gaye golden lockes 
That gaue vnto Uenus scornes and 
mockes 242 
Yet in Thessalia with this boyes fyrye 
darte 
This great God was pearsed to the harte 
And for conclusion, the Goddes and God- 
desses al 245 
Of whome Uarro doth make rehearsall 
Beholde how afore loues chayre they goo 
Fast fettred and chayned from toppe to 
too 
And Jupiter, hym selfe, the great myghty 
kynge 
Amonge the other, whiche is a maruelous 
thing. 250 


[There follow Chapter ii, 274 lines, Chap- 
ter iii, 278 lines, Chapter iv, 222 lines. 
Next comes the Triumph of Chastity, 278 
lines; then the Triumph of Death, in two 
parts, of 222 and 224 lines. The Triumphs 
of Fame, Time, and Divinity (or Eternity) 
complete the work.] 


A “SONNET” ON THE PSALMS 391 


A “SONNET” ON THE PSALMS 


The manuscript now marked Royal 18 A xv, of the British Museum, is the 
gift-copy to the princess Mary Tudor of Morley’s prose translation of Turre- 
cremata’s commentary on the thirty-sixth Psalm. It is of nine leaves only; and 
on the last page, following the translation, we find :— 


Carmina Maphei Vegu Laudensis de vtilitate psalmorum 


Orpheu sileto abijcite Mercurii lyram 

Et tu Tripus obliterate Delphice. 

Nam Dauid ad nos spiritus pulsans lyram 
Mysteriorum operta patefecit dei. 
Miraculorum signat veterum copiam. 
Creata sit creantis in laudem sui. 
Preseruat omnes initians misteriis. 

Inter futura aperit iudicium iudiciis. 


The Englyshe of thies verses. In an Italion Ryme called . Soneto . 


Orpheus with thy musyke and all thy pryde. 
And thou Mercurius do thy harpe away 
And thow three fotede Apollo . I . do say 
Sett your Armony quyte and clene asyde. 
ffor dauid that the spryte of trueth tryde. 
Playnge on hys harpe the swete holy lay 
The mysterys of god dothe manifestly play 
In shewynge vs christe that on the crosse dyede 
And all creatures exhorteth to commende 
The hyghe god and celestiall kynge. 
And made with hys worde eury thynge. 
As the Iudge of vs all at the latter ende. 
Then let vs pretende 
Hys name to gloryfy hys mercy to reherse. 
Whiche Dauid harppes on in many a swete verse. 
Finis. 


The Latin which Morley translates was written by Mapheus Vegius of Lodi, 
who died in 1457. The Maxima Biblioteca Veterum Patrum, Leyden, 1677. con- 
tains in its vol. 26, pp. 632-787, a collection of Vegius’ work in prose and verse,— 
religious, didactic, allegorical, and pseudo-classical. The best-known of these 
compositions is a supplementary or thirteenth book to the Aeneid, which is to be 
found in many early editions of Virgil, and was included in Douglas’ translation 
of the Aeneid. In the Carmina Illustrium Poetarum Italorum, 11 vols, Florence, 
1719-26, are printed (vol. 10) many epistles and epitaphs by Vegius, some “‘rustic- 
alia”, and (vols. 6 and 7) various poems addressed to Vegius by his contemporaries. 

This poem on the Psalms is not in either of the above-mentioned collections. 

With Morley’s application of the term “soneto” to his 15-line rendering of 
the Latin cp. Gascoigne’s (1563) definition in his Certayne Notes. Gascoigne 
there says,—“some think that all Poems (being short) may be called Sonets”’, 
but that he can best allow the word to be used of poems having fourteen lines, 
each line with ten syllables. In 1869 the editor of Hearne’s Reliquiae (see p. 218 
here) applied the term “sonnets” to roundels translated from Charles d’Orléans ; 
one of these may be read on p. 231 above. 


WALTON’S TRANSLATION OF BOETHIUS 


A. PREFACE, PROLOGUE, METRE I, PROSE I [PAGE 42 


1 ff. Apologies for “rude langage” and for “wittes dulle’ are formula with late medieval 
writers. Courtly versifiers often protested that the noble lady their subject was far beyond 
her servant’s powers of description, or indeed beyond that of any human tongue; writings of a 
more intellectual cast bewailed the poet’s inferiority to his model or his non-acquaintance with 
the Muses. Such apologies are often accompanied by the stereotyped request for the reader’s 
indulgence or for his corrective hand; and all this material was properly found in the prologue, 
with echo sometimes in the envoy or epilogue. Its appearance elsewhere in the work marks 
a growth towards individual expression. 

Another line of that growth was in the conception of the prologue itself. One type of 
the medieval prologue was the scholastic, organized according to Aristotle; it is discussed 
by Hope Allen in Romanic Review 8:454 ff. In its stricter early medieval construction it 
persists in such later works as Brunetto Latini’s Trésor, in Dante’s Convito, in Bokenam’s 
Legends. Its function was the preliminary stating of the “four causes” of the work which 
followed, causes “material, formal, final, and efficient”. The efficient cause, Bokenam says, is 
the author, the final cause his purpose; the matter of the work and its arrangement are included 
under the two other heads, But another type of prologue, which we may call the “rhetorical”, 
gained ground as the scholastic method relaxed; it is discussed in the pseudo-Ciceronian treatise 
Ad Herennium, the source of so much of the rhetorical theory of the latter Middle Ages. 

An “exordium”, says the Ad Herennium i, 4, may precede the argument for a cause 
which is either honest, vicious, doubtful, or humble; each of these is defined and the manage- 
ment of the audience for each is counselled. There are two sorts of exordia, that which the 
Greeks call the prohemium and that which is termed the epodos or “insinuatio”’. The proheme 
endeavors to attune the minds of the listeners, ta render them sympathetic toward a doubtful 
or a vicious case, attentive to a humble case. If the case be an honorable one, the proheme 
may or may not be used. 

Study of English prologues or prohemes written in the Transition age shows very plainly 
the attempt to win the sympathy and attention of the reader. In a literary period so controlled 
by aristocratic patronage this would naturally be the case; the author’s self-depreciation, his 
entreaty for indulgence, are aimed at the patron’s sympathy, just as the frequent praise of 
literature aims at holding his attention. And eulogy of the noble patron is of course to be 
expected in work done to order. It was the freer relation of author to the larger public, if 
only in the author’s thought, which brought about the great contrast between most medieval 
prologues and the prologues of Chaucer, even of Gower; and it is the relapse to protected 
literature which stamps most of the prologues of the fifteenth century. A comparative study 
of prologues in this period would have value for this reason alone, for there can be traced 
in each writer of the Transition, in Hoccleve’s evasion of the prologue, in Walton’s quiet 
business-like treatment, in Lydgate’s effusive obedience to code, in all the later combinations of 
tone, the varying relations between the stereotype and the increasingly plastic state of a liter- 
ature which was responding to social change. 

It is clarity which Walton seeks; and after complying briefly with conventional require- 
ment in his preface, he devotes a prologue to the historical setting of the Consolatio. 

4. yowre hest, the command of Elizabeth Berkeley, according to the 1525 print as men- 
tioned in the introd. above. The absence of emphasis from Walton’s allusion to his supposed 
patroness should be compared with the tone e.g. of Hoccleve, of Lydgate, and of the Palladius- 
translator towards Gloucester; see pp. 90, 203, here. 

13-17 may be paraphrased: “I pray to God so to help me with his inspiration that it 
(the text of Boethius) be not defouled nor corrupted by my translation——to God, who is 
both lock and key to wisdom, that I vary not from the text—’etc. 

14, 16. Schiimmer in his critical edition puts a semicolon after each of these lines, thus 
destroying the syntactical connection. With 16 cp. Bokenam as cited note on 44 below. 


[ 392 ] 


PAGE 42] BOETHIUS-TRANSLATION: A 393 


17. As for, etc. This use of as to introduce a precatory clause is characteristic of 
MidEng; cp. KnTale 1458, “As sende love and pees bitwixe hem two”, or Hoccleve’s LettCupid 
30, “As doth me grace” etc. 

18. his. The neuter pronoun its is a late coinage, rare in Shakespeare and not in the 1611 
version of the Bible. 

19. And wordes eke. This is an unusual statement for a medieval translator; the general 
attitude is that of Lydgate in the Dance Macabre 666,—‘“‘Not worde by worde but folwynge 
the substaunce”. Bokenam, finishing his life of St. Agnes, says, line 680 ff., that he has followed 
St. Ambrose 

Not wurde for wurde for bat ne may be 
In no translacyoun aftyr Ieromys decre 
But fro sentence to sentence. 


St. Jerome, in his epistle Ad Pammachium, no. 57 of his Epistles, declares that he has 
endeavored “non verbum e verbo, sed sensum exprimere de sensu” in translating from the 
Greek. He supports himself by reference to Cicero and to Horace’s Ars Poetica; and further 
on in the same letter he says, of interpreting the Apostles and Evangelists to elucidate the 
Old Testament,—“sensum quaesisse, non verba; nec magnopere de ordine sermonibus curasse, 
dum intellectui res pareret.” Also, in writing to Theophilus, epistle 114, Jerome says that 
his disciple should endeavor, when translating, “ut nihil desit ex sensibus, cum aliquid desit 
ex verbis.” Jerome’s words became law to the medieval mind; John of Salisbury dresses the 
principle more gracefully, but nevertheless conforms to it, when he writes (Polycraticus v:2) 
that he works “ita tamen ut sententiarum vestigia potius imitarer, quam passus verborum.” 

25. This and the following stanza are printed by Todd in his Illustrations of Gower and 
Chaucer, page xxxii; also by Skeat, Oxford Chaucer ii :xvi-xvii. 

26-27. So far as we know, Walton was preceded in English only by King Alfred’s prose, 
by the anon. Old Eng. alliterative version of the Metra, and by Chaucer. We do not however 
know the date of that revamping of Chaucer’s first book which is preserved in the fifteenth- 
century MS Bodl. Auct. F. 3, 5. And it must be noted that swm, as here used by Walton, 
may be either plural or singular. 

29. word for word. Chaucer’s translation is closer to the Latin than is Walton’s; his 
principal divergences from Boethius are the doubling of terms to translate a single Latin 
word, and the frequent insertion of explanatory glosses. The adoption of some of these 
glosses into Walton’s text is, as Cossack points out, one of the clearest proofs of Walton’s 
study of Chaucer. 

37. dop trete. On the auxiliary do in MidEng, especially in Walton, see p. 89 of Hittmair’s 
monograph in Ref.List below. Cp. dede line 56 below. 

38. book of moralite. Gower’s Confessio Amantis. 

44. Witnes vppon Ierome, etc. The passage referred to is probably that in Jerome’s 
letter to Eustachius, no. 22 of his Epistles as ed. in Migne’s Patrologia Latina. Jerome there 
asks what Horace has to do with the Psalter, or Virgil with the Gospels; “we ought not”, 
he says, “to drink at the same time from the cup of Christ and from the cup of demons.” 
He narrates a dream in which he was castigated before the Throne for his love of heathen 
authors; to his assertion that he was a Christian the Divine Voice replied, “Thou liest, thou 
art a Ciceronian.” And punishment followed, until he repented. 

With Walton’s disclaimer here we may compare Lydgate in the Life of Our Lady :— 


Nether to clyo ne to calyope 

Me list not calle for to helpe me 

Ne to no muse my poyntel for to gye 
But leve al this and say vnto marie... . 


Cp. also St. Edmund i. 90-92. Bokenam in his prolocutory to the life of St. Mary Magdalen 
says, line 234 ff. 
Wher fore lord to be alone I crye 


Wych welle art of mercy & of pyte 
And neyther to Clyo ner to Melpomene 


394 NOTES [PAGE 43 


Ner to noon opir of be musys nyne 
Ner to Pallas Mynerue ner Lucyne 
Ner to Apollo wych as old poetys seye 
Of wysdam beryth both lok & keye 

Of gay speche eek & of eloquencye 
But alle bem wyttyrly I denye. . . 


Similarly Hardyng, in cap. vi of his Chronicle as printed by Grafton in 1543, enumerates a list 
of “old false gods” and says: “All these I wyll refuse nowe and defye And to ye God in 
heauen I praye in magestie My wytte to enforce—” etc. See Barclay’s eclogue iv :755-6, p. 329 
here, and his prologue 116-17. 

58. welles of Calliope. With this mode of protesting incapacity cp. Chaucer, prol. to 
the FranklTale,— 


I slep never on the mount of Parnaso 
Ne lerned Marcus Tullius Cithero,— 


the hint for which probably came from Persius’ prologue to his satires,— 


Nec fonte labra prolui caballino 
Neque in bicipiti somniasse Parnasso 
Memini, ut repente sic poeta prodirem. 


Chaucer is imitated by Lydgate, by Bokenam, Burgh, and others. See Lydgate’s Troy Book 
iii :554-56, where Lydgate says of Chaucer: 


For in makyng he drank of be welle 
Vndir Pernaso pat pe Musis kepe 
On whiche hil I myght neuer slepe. . . . 


See also the envoy to Lydgate’s Miracles of St. Edmund, the Fall of Princes iii:8-17 as 
printed p. 174 here, and FaPrin ix :3436-38, p. 187 here; see Burgh as printed p. 189 here. Boke- 
nam in the prol. to his St. Anna says: 


For Tullius wolde me neuer non teche 
Ne in Parnase wher Apollo doth dwelle 
I neuer slepte— 


The Pilgrimage to Parnassus act i, Sidney’s “I never drank of Aganippe well”, etc. return to 
the classics for their inspiration. 

60-61. Walton here names the three Furies, and rejects them as sources of inspiration. 
Chaucer, in Troilus iv :22-24, had set England the fashion of invoking the Furies for a tragic 
composition. Lydgate appeals to the Furies in Troy Book iii:5443 ff., Duobus Mercatoribus 
stanza 73. Does Walton’s language here indicate knowledge of Chaucer’s Troilus? 

81-88. This stanza, the second of the prologue, is by some of the MSS, as here, marked 
“Nota per exemplum”; this may have led to its separate copying into commonplace-books. 
The (later) MS Selden B 24, for instance, has this isolated stanza, marking it “Qd Chaucere”, 
and the lines were therefore included by Morris in the Aldine Chaucer, (see my Manual, 
pp. 448-9). It is in Ellesmere 26 A, 13 of the Huntington Library, in Petworth 8, in Advo- 
cates Libr. Edinburgh 1, 1, 6, is at the end of Brit. Mus. Adds. 29729 (John Stow’s MS), 
and on the endleaf of the Gower-MS formerly Phillipps 8192, with other bits. It appears 
in Harley 2251, fol. 152 b, as if it were the last stanza of Lydgate’s Wicked Tongue. It is 
also in Brit. Mus. Royal 20 B xv, see Brusendorff, p. 436. 

With the phrase “parelouse pestilence” in line 87 cp. the closing sentence of Boethius’ 
hook iii prose 5, and its rendering by Chaucer, MerchTale 549 f. The ascription of this 
(detached) stanza to Chaucer in Scottish MSS may be responsible for the phrase in Henry- 
son’s Fables, 598. See Lydgate’s Troy Book iv :4517-18. 

89. oon pe principall. This usage, instead of our modern one of the principal, is regular 
in MidEng, also oon with the superlative, e.g. “she was oon the faireste under sonne”, Frank- 
Tale 6. On Nero see below, line 94 note. 


PAGE 43] BOETHIUS-TRANSLATION: A 395 


92. hym selfe. The use of himself etc. as nominative can be exemplified from all periods 
of English; cp. Robert of Gloucester, Chaucer’s CanYeoTale 431, Macbeth iv, 3:150, Tenny- 
son, Aylmer’s Field 596,—“The dagger which himself Gave Edith.” This fact is used as 
argument in note on FaPrinces A 303. 

94, his maistir. The philosopher and rhetorician L. Annaeus Seneca, tutor of the youthful 
Nero, was condemned to death by the emperor, A.D. 65, on suspicion of complicity in a 
conspiracy. Boethius, who perhaps was attracted to that example by his own situation, dis- 
cusses Nero in book ii metre 6, book iii metre 4 and prose 5. The persecution of Christians 
by Nero was however the principal reason for the horror in which the Middle Ages held his 
name. 

101. Paule writeth pus, etc. The persecutions of Christians by Nero and by Domitian 
were regarded by the Middle Ages as the activity of Antichrist, and Nero was often identified 
with the evil force described by St. Paul in 2d Thessal. ii, 3-4,—“et revelatus fuerit homo 
peccati, filius perditionis” etc. 

105. techeth. For note on verbal plural in—th see Cavendish 1261 here. See line 367 below. 

125. a conquerour. Theodoric the Ostrogoth, a Christian, was encouraged by the East- 
ern Roman emperor Zeno to march against the heathen Odoacer, the Germanic invader of 
Italy, whom Theodoric overthrew, making himself the master of Italy and Western Roman 
Emperor in 493. He ruled ably and peacefully for thirty-three years, during which time the 
Eastern emperors were Zeno, Anastasius, and Justin. 

136. perelus with to dele. For word-order see note on Thebes 35. 

139 ff. Walton, like many medieval chroniclers, connects the fall and death of Boethius 
with Theodoric’s alleged persecution of Trinitarian Christians, thereby making Boethius a 
religious martyr. But most of the long reign of Theodoric was conspicuously tolerant; him- 
self an Arian, he made no move against the orthodox. It was in 523 that the Eastern emperor 
Justin (see line 163) made a proclamation against Manichaean and other heretics, an action 
which roused Theodoric to protest. At nearly the same time a conspiracy against Theodoric 
was discovered, fomented from the East, and Boethius was imprisoned on suspicion of com- 
plicity in this. Boethius’ own account of the circumstances, as given in book i prose 4 of the 
Consolatio, describes his repeated opposition to “graft” by highly-placed officials, his defence 
of unpopular men, and one case of his withstanding the emperor’s will; of doctrinal differences 
we hear nothing., 

143. hym presente. An ablative absolute. 

154-5. colors ... of rethoryk. See note on FaPrinces G 46. 

168. arrians, Arians, adherents to the doctrines of Arius, presbyter of Alexandria in the 
fourth century, who denied that Christ was consubstantial, i.e. of the same essence, with God. 
Arian opinions were embraced by a large part of the Church, and the fourth century was 
torn with dissension. 

169 ff. Paulus Diaconus, a Lombard historian of the 8th century and reputed continuer 
of Eutropius in a Historia Romana, has in book xvi of that work a narrative of these events. 
He says that in the sixth year of his reign the orthodox Eastern emperor Justin moved 
against heretics; that Theodoric, “Ariana lue pollutus”, sent Pope John and several dignitaries 
to Constantinople to protest, threatening to put “universos Italiae populos” to the sword 
unless Justin abandoned his purpose; that the embassy implored Justin, with tears, to save 
Italy, and that Justin yielded to their entreaties. But as the embassy “in itinere demorantur”, 
Theodoric, “rabie suae iniquitatis stimulatus”, executed both the “catholicos viros” Boethius and 
Symmachus. (See ed. in Monumenta Germaniae Historiae, 1878.) There is nothing in Paulus 
Diaconus to match Walton’s lines 195-198. 

188. for baire avne beste, for their own good, to save their own necks. 

200. paire olde gouernaunce. Paulus Diaconus has suo iuri. 

207-8. Boethius is said to be buried in Pavia, twenty miles from Milan, where he was slain. 

209 ff. Somewhat different accounts of Pope John are given by Paulus, and by Gregory 
of Tours in his De Gloria Martyrum cap. 40. Paulus says that when Pope John on his return 
went to Theodoric at Ravenna, Theodoric, “ductus malitia quod eum Justinus catholicae pietatis 
defensor honorifice suscepisset”, threw him and his fellow-ambassadors into prison, where 


396 NOTES [PAGE 45 


the pope soon died. There is nothing as specific in Paulus as is line 214 here. Gregory does 
not mention any embassy to Constantinople, but says that the pope endeavored to dissuade 
Theodoric from his intended persecution of Trinitarians, the emperor imprisoned him, etc. 

217. For the slaying of Symmachus, ex-consul and Boethius’ father-in-law, see 169; see 
FaPrinces H. 

219. heroicus. The 1525 print of Walton has here, as often, a prose note in elucidation. 
According to Cossack, of. cit., p. 14, it reads: “Vir heroicus ys man geuen al to contemplation 
and to vertu in whom al flesly passyons ben quenched and repressed.” Cossack remarks that 
a Latin source for this part of Walton’s text is obvious, or the Latin word would not have 
been dragged in. 

224. The he refers to Theodoric, whose death in 526 closely followed those of Boethius 
and of Pope John. 

223. Walton now cites Gregory as his authority. The passage may be found in Migne’s 
Patrologia latina ed. of Gregory’s works, Dialogue iv cap. 30, p. 368,—“De morte Theoderici 
regis Ariani”. Travellers to the island of Lipari, visiting a holy hermit who dwelt there, 
were told by him of the emperor’s death. To their denial and disbelief the hermit replied that 
the dayi preceding he had seen Theodoric led between Pope John and Symmachus, his hands 
bound, shoeless and ungirt (discinctus), and cast into the crater (ollam) of Vulcan. (The 
substance of 234 ff. is not in Gregory.) And on their return to Italy the travellers found that 
Theodoric had died on the day specified by the hermit. (Most of this is also in Paulus 
Diaconus op. cit.) 

231. By vlcane, or the pot of Vulcan, the still smoking crater of Vulcano is meant,—one 
of the Lipari Islands, a volcanic group north of Sicily. 

244. According to Schiimmer, all MSS present this short line; the print reads—haue ofte 
seyde, etc. 

249 ff. The text of Boethius now begins. Wiilker prints lines 249-344, and book i metre 
5 entire, from this MS, with no mention of Walton’s name. Note the alliteration in the two 
opening stanzas. Note that in the Trésor Amoureux conjecturally ascribed to Froissart it is 
said of Boethius that by Envy he was brought— 


Ou il disoit: Las! qu’il m’ennoie, 

Je vi le temps que je faisoie 

En paix, en recreacion 

Chanconnettes ot je prenoie 

Parfaite consolacion! ... (ed. Scheler iii :216-17) 


253. redyng. So most MSS; Phillipps 1099 and Harley 43 read rendyng, and Balliol 316 
B is, corrected by an inserted n. The Latin lacerae Camenae and Chaucer’s rendinge Muses 
show the true form of the word, but reding probably appealed to the scribes as connecting 
the Muses with letters; and the horizontal line, for the omitted nasal, over the vowel, was 
either unnoticed or ignored. Skeat ii:xxiv puts this use of the participle in the list of 
Chaucer’s “inaccurate, unhappy, or insufficient” renderings. See Troilus iv:358, “And with 
his chere and loking al totorn”; and note that Coluccio Salutati (died 1406) says in one of 
his letters that the Muses are integrae when wisdom is joined to eloquence and sound reason 
does not oppose, but are lacerae if wisdom and reason be lacking to eloquence. See Emerton, 
Humanism and Tyranny, Cambridge, 1925, p. 329. Wilker, accepting redyng, explained as 
“die mir ratenden, die zu mir sprechenden Musen”. The 1525 print of Walton changed to 
“Lamentable Muses”. 

255-56. Added by Walton, as are 257-8, 272. 

273-80. See Lydgate’s DuorMercat 743-46, and the note on FaPrinces, p. 185 here. See 
also Orléans xv, and Chaucer’s Troilus iv :503-4. 

283. The he refers to Death, in line 284. Note Walton’s use here of Chaucer’s gloss, as 
frequently. Chaucer has “the sorowful houre that is to seyn the deeth”. For sodainly Walton 
has no authority. 

285. sche, i.e. Fortune. 

289-96. This stanza is expanded from two lines of the Latin. 


a 


PAGE 46] BOETHIUS-TRANSLATION: A 397 


298. fyngres folde. Walton departs from the Latin for the sake of rime; Chaucer and 
other workers in prose are literal. 

299-300 are added by Walton, also 303-4. 

307. brend semyng. The Latin is “ardentibus et . . . perspicacibus”. Chaucer has “iyen 
brenninge and cleer seinge”. The Walton MSS vary, writing brennyng, brenned, brennes. Two 
MSS write “—as fire clere”. 

309. As bogh. So the MSS, according to Schiimmer. The print has Al, not As. 

310. corage. This very frequent Middle English word meant “temperament, mind, spirit’. 
By the end of the 17th century it had become limited to its present meaning. 

313 ff. This stanza is full of borrowings from Chaucer. 

315. extent. This reading is found, says Schtimmer, in four MSS and the print; it is 
much more plausible than the existent of Royal and of nine other MSS. 

318-19. Mainly padding by Walton. 

322. Chaucer has “subtile craft of perdurable matere’, The Latin is “subtili artificio 
indissolubili materia perfectae”. Putting perdurable under rime, Walton was obliged to pad 
the lines riming with it. 

328 is added by Walton because his adoption of the word elde from Chaucer, in 326, 
compelled him to pad. 

330, 332. Walton does not use the explanatory glosses incorporated by Chaucer into his 
text. Boethius, in the dialogue with Porphyrius, says “Est enim philosophia genus, species 
vero eius duo, una quae Jewpyrixy dicitur, altera quae mpaxtixy, id est speculativa et activa.” 
In Chaucer the two species are termed “the lyf actif and the lyf contemplatyf”. 

333. Chaucer, following the Latin, says “there were”. 

338. The translation of abstulerant as born away (so in Chaucer), and its use in rime, 
forced Walton to pad the riming lines. 

346. approchen. The Latin is adsistentes, “standing by”. It is Chaucer who says aprochen, 
as also endytinge wordeg in line 347. 

349. bis companye. Walton softens here, using the same word by which, in 373, he 
renders the Latin chorus. Boethius’ scenicae meretriculae is translated by Chaucer “comune 
strompetes of the stage”, by Queen Elizabeth “stagis harlotz’, by Colvile “crafty harlots’, 
by Cooper “seducing mummers”. 

354. Walton moves swete venim from a preceding sentence in Boethius to this. 

356. full affeccioun. Three MSS, says Schtimmer, scattered in various parts of the 
genealogical tree, write foule instead of full. To this they could be led by the pressure of the 
context. Walton errs in full; the Latin sentence contains uberem, but not in syntactical 
connection with affectuum. 

358 ff. Walton here renders the Latin better than did Chaucer. Boethius wrote: “mentes 
assuefaciunt morbo non liberant”. This the 1609 translator gives as “accustom men’s minds 
to sickness instead of curing them’. When Chaucer wrote “they holden the hertes of men 
in usage but they,ne delivere not folke fro maladye”’, he connected morbo with liberant. 

360. aswage. This transitive use of assuage is not cited by the NED until the Lover’s 
Mass, a text which the Dictionary ascribes to Lydgate. See Mass 162. 

362. By rendering profanum as foole unprofitable (from Chaucer), Walton found him- 
self obliged to pad the lines agreeing in rime. 

366. Instead of &, several MSS have in; the Latin is in eo. Chaucer here translates: 
“for why, in swiche an unprofitable man, myn ententes ne weren nothing endamaged.” 
Queen Elizabeth renders correctly, ending “For by suche our worke had got no harme.” 
Walton’s aim is blind, but he seems to be using the Latin rather than Chaucer, and to 
have gone wrong. Boethius wrote: “nihil in eo nostrae operae laederentur.” Walton treated 
the verb as if singular, with nihil as subject and nostrae operae a genitive singular dependent 
on nihil. His not means nought. 

367. Royal, says Schiimmer, is the only MS reading peie; others have pis, bese, 
Walton does not transfer to his text the Eleaticis atque Academicis which Boethius specifies 
with studiis, and which Chaucer retains, adding the explanatory phrase in Grece. 


398 NOTES [PAGE 47 


369. ye filthes. The Latin is Sirenes; Chaucer and Colvile use mermaidenes, Queen 
Elizabeth Sirenes swite. Possibly Walton here transfers some of the force unused in his 
line 349 above. 

372 is inserted by Walton; note the rime. 

375. Walton omits the blush of the original. 

381 is inserted. 

386. on be corner. Chaucer, the uttereste corner; Boethius in extrema parte, i.e. at 
the foot. 

388. This line is short in the Royal and Balliol MSS, as in most others; Harley 43, 
a text usually careless and unreliable, reads “That so with teris wepynge was be wett”, and 
Trinity also has the word wepynge. 

391-2 are padded. 

B. BOOK II METRE 5: THE FORMER AGE 

In this metre are found a number of Chaucerian phrases, from the prose, not from the 
verse; e.g., helden hem apayed, outrage, trewe feldes, hoolsom slepes, cruel clariouns ful hust, 
egre hate, a precious peril. It is printed by Skeat, Oxford Chaucer ii :xvii-xviii. 

6. sese their talent, quench or satisfy their desire. This meaning for talent is usual in 
OFr and MidEng; sese is to be taken transitively, as cesse, “make to cease”. 

8. Walton incorporates in his text the Chaucerian gloss, “that is to seyn, they coude make 
no piment nor clarrie.” See Roman de la Rose 8418-19, “Et de Viaue simple bevoient Sans 
querre piment ne clare”. 

10. venim. Most of the early translators thus render veneno, which is rather “dye”. 

13-14. Here Walton renders, not unhappily, “Vmbras (dabat) altissima pinus.” 

21. armour, Chaucer armures. A number of Boethius-MSS have instead of arma the 
word arua, “fields”. Cp. footnote p. 96 here. 

24.. reward, i.e. regard, consideration of the fact that he must lose his blood. 

28. more fersere. The double comparative and double superlative are not uncommon in 
Middle English. See, e.g., most fresshest La Belle Dame 105, most surest Troy Book iii:47, 
more lyker Hawes’ Pastime 607, etc. Cavendish in his prose life of Wolsey is addicted to 
their use. 

29-31. Here the syntax seems broken. “Alas, who was the man who would concern 
himself (with) the gold and gems thus hidden? who first began to mine I cannot say, but 
(I know) that’”—ete. 

Queen Elizabeth’s transl. of this metre is appended, from the EETS print. 


Happy to muche the formar Age Than wer Navies Stil 

With faithful fild content Nor bloudshed by Cruel hate 
Not Lost by sluggy Lust Had fearful weapons staned 
that wontz the Long fastz What first fury to foes shuld 
To Louse by son-got Acorne any armes rayse 

that knew not Baccus giftz Whan Cruel woundz he saw 
With molton hony mixed And no reward for bloude? 

Nor Serike shining flise Wold God agane Our formar time 
With tirius venom die to wonted maners fel 

Sound slips Gave the grasse But Gridy getting Loue burnes 
ther drink the running streme Sorar than Etna with her flames 
Shades gaue the hiest pine O who the first man was 

The depth of sea they fadomd not of hiden Gold the waight 

Nor wares chosen from fur Or Gemmes that willing lurkt 
Made Stranger find new shores The deare danger digd? 


_ It will be observed that the Elizabethan feeling for language and rhythm, is not shared 
by Elizabeth. 
C. BOOK II, METRE 7 


From Chaucer’s prose are: liften up hir nekkes, maketh egal and evene, stinting of fame 
(this last from Chaucer’s added gloss). 

2. The sense-order of the words is—“Sovereign joys for to be in renown”, i.e., whoever 
ignorantly thinks that joy is there. 


—— 


PAGE 48] BOETHIUS-TRANSLATION: D 399 


3. Read As instead of And; see note on line 17 of A above. The Latin is cernat, i.e. 
“Let him behold”. 

3-5. See Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules 57, where Chaucer is using the Somnium Scip- 
ionis, of which see lines 135 ff. 

5-8 are expanded. 

9. what aylen, etc. So MS Balliol A. The subject is apparently men, but this personal 
use of the verb is rare. proute is a normal OEng form beside proude, which died out by the 
end of the fifteenth century. 

13. resoun. So MS Balliol. We expect renoun; the Latin has fama; and see 37 below. 

13 ff. Stewart says of the Latin here that it is an “anticipation of Villon’. Rather say that 
the stanzas are dominated by the “Ubi Sunt” motive so frequent in the latter Middle Ages; 
see introd. to extract C from Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, p. 169 here. 

21. we trowe. Other MSS, J trowe. The phrase is inserted for rime, as is overblowe, 24. 

22. Brutus. When King Alfred renders this passage of Boethius, he adds here the 
explanation—“odSe naman Cassius’. See note on Brutus Cassius. Brutus is probably however 
L. Junius Brutus, the inflexible consul who condemned his two sons to death for conspiracy 
against the Republic, and for whom Rome wore twelve months’ mourning; Fabricius, consul 
and military commander, was famous for his frugality and his uprightness; stern Cato, the 
Censor, was the model of austerity to his time. 

24. Chaucer has “marked with a few lettres’. MSS Balliol 316 A and Harley 43 read 
as does Royal. 

27, 28 are inserted, as are 31, 32. 

29. fforwip. Balliol 316 A, ffor why. Should we adopt this latter reading, we could 
paraphrase: “wherefore, when ye pass from this life, ye ben unable to be known”. 

33. Chaucer and Gower are named together, conventionally. See pp. 96-97 here. 

35. yow selven. Balliol, your seluen. 


D. BOOK III, METRE I2 


With the serious simplicity of the story of Orpheus, as told here, by Chaucer, and by 
Boethius, compare the attempted waggishness of the version in Lydgate’s FaPrinces i:5776 ff., 
there filling eleven stanzas, of which I quote the third, fourth, and fifth from the text as ed. 
Bergen, Carnegie Instit. and EETS 1923-27. 


An harpe he hadde off Mercurius 

With the which Erudice he wan 

And to Bachus as writ Ouidius 

Sacrifises ful solempne he began 

And onto helle for his wiff he ran 

Hir to recure with soote touchis sharpe 
Which that he made vpon his heuenli harpe 


But whan that he this labour on hym took 
A lawe was maade which that bond hym sore 
That yiff that he bakward caste his look 

He sholde hire lese & seen his wiff no more 
But it is seide sithen gon ful yore 

Ther may no lawe louers weel constreyne 
So inportable is ther dedli peyne 


Yiff summe husbondis hadde stonden in the cas 
Ta lost her wyues for a look sodeyne 

Thei wolde ha suffred and nat seid allas 

But pacientli endured al ther peyne 

And thanked god that broken was the cheyne 
Which hath so longe hem in prisoun bounde 
That thei be grace han such a fredam founde 


The tone of this latter stanza continues through the rest of the story. It is not derived 
from the French prose of Laurent, which Lydgate is in general following, and as I have 


400 NOTES [PAGE 49 


suggested p. 95 here, may be an attempt to divert the Duke of Gloucester, the patron of 
Lydgate’s translation. 

10. The houndes fell are added by Walton to the lions of the Latin. 

12. Punctuate with a pause after hound; lines 13 and 14 are closely connected. 

15, 16, 23, 24, are added by Walton. 

28. welles thre. The numeral is added by Walton. It was a frequent medieval error to 
speak of Helicon as a fountain. On the slopes of Mt. Helicon, the haunt of the Muses, 
were the spring Hippocrene and the fount Aganippe; Walton may have thought of Helicon 
as a third fount. 

29. modres. So all MSS which I have consulted; we expect the nominative? But the 
text here is unclear; there is no predicate for dere Calliope, and emendation is necessary. 
The Latin is deae matris fontibus hauserat. 

34. helle. Hades or Pluto, god of the lower world. 

35. lawnesse. For the spelling cp. avne, “owne”, line 188 of A ante. 

36. at. To ask at is MidEng idiom; see Troilus 11:894, but cp. ibid. 896. 

40. Walton renders stupet as “falle on slepe’. The Latin is: “Stupet tergeminus nouo 
Captus carmine ianitor”; Chaucer translates the verbs “caught and all abayst”. 

52. surfetoures. Walton’s translation of sontes, “the guilty’, is more definite than 
Chaucer’s “the sowles”. The 1609 version has “the guilty souls”. 

45. swift. Chaucer renders “Velox praecipitat rota” as “the overthrowing wheel”. 

47-48. “And Tantalus, although he had long been tortured by thirst, desired no water.” 

49. gryp. Chaucer, “the fowl that hight voltor”. 

53 is inserted for rime. 

61-2. This well-known passage of Boethius,—“Quis legem dat amantibus? Maior lex 
amor est sibi’,—is used by Chaucer in Troilus iv:618, KnTale 306. 

63. neygh out of pe bondes blake. Boethius, “noctis prope terminos”; Chaucer, “almest at 
the termes of the night, that is to seyn, at the laste boundes of helle’. 

64-5. The Latin is simply :—‘Vidit, perdidit, occidit”. Chaucer renders,—“lokede abakward 
on Eurydice his wyf, and loste hir, and was deed”. Walton was doubtless influenced} by the 
coming mentem, “mind”, which he uses as rime-word, to the weakening of occidit; but Chaucer 
gives an erroneous translation, as do many others. The 1609 rendering, uncorrected by Stewart 
in the Loeb Library ed., is “doth lose and kill her and himself”. But Boethius, who was a 
sound and able metrist, uses not the transitive verb occidit but the intransive occidit; he says 
that Orpheus looked on Eurydice, and lost her, and was undone. For his climax-verb Boethius 
may have had in mind the phrase of Virgil, Georg. iv:491-2, “ibi omnis Effusus labor”; he 
certainly did not intend to assert Orpheus’ immediate death, as Skeat’s note on the Chaucerian 
passage suggests. (I am here indebted to Prof. G. L. Hendrickson of Yale University.) 


E. PREFACE TO BOOKS IV AND V: BOOK IV, PROSE I AND METRE I 


Walton is about to attempt the most abstruse part of Boethius’ discussion, that dealing 
with predestination and free will. As he begins, he makes, in his own person, a renewed 
protestation of his insufficiency “to the height of this great argument”; and either because 
of the increased difficulty of his task or because of some external cause unknown to us, 
he changes at this point from the eight to the seven-line stanza. His proheme is lyrical, depreca- 
tory, suppliant; its dignity and its command of verse are notable. 

3. Conteyned. This word may be Conceyued. See lines 14, 44 below. 

8-11. See Job chap. 38. 

20. Ye ben. Walton may be addressing his patroness, although the absence of any word 
of respect or gratitude is in that case peculiar. He may mean Boethius. 

21-22. These lines are apparently bound together syntactically. Walton is compelled, 
he says, to show himself overbold (in discussing the questions) “of hap”, etc. 

22. Of hap of fortune and of destine. Cp. Chaucer’s phrase, CTprol 846, “Were it by 
aventure or sort or cas”; see KnTale 607 etc., Lydgate’s Troy Book iii:2815 etc., Dante’s 
Inferno 32:76, “Se voler fu, o destino, o fortuna”. 


PAGE 50] BOETHIUS-TRANSLATION: E 401 


24. Supposyng may be parsed as agreeing with mynde. These questions of predestination, 
says Walton, have bewildered many a mind which thinks that our free will, etc. 

23-25, 26. Note the rime. 

39. wel & wo. Cp. Chaucer’s “Wo was his cook”, CTprol. 351. 

47. failleth of his ende, fails to accomplish its purpose. 

49. So may we, i.e., “So little may we”, etc. 

50. Schiimmer inserts the before movynge, from one MS and the print of 1525. The 
meaning is that fire, by the impelling power of its nature, rises. 

66. wonder lustilye. Boethius, “leniter suauiterque”’, Chaucer “softely and delitably’. 

67. This line is inserted by Walton. 

70. interrupcion. This word, and interrupt, are mainly used by Lydgate and by Hoccleve 
to mean infringement of law, breach of the peace, etc. In a minority of cases they are 
applied to speech, e.g. Troy Book iv:4808. Not in Chaucer. Cp. Alanus’ De Planctu Naturae, 
prose iv, “praefata narrationi meorum verborum parenthesi syncopatae tenorem hujus quaestionis 
inserui, dicens :—” 

71. Chaucer writes “gyderesse of verrey light”, which Walton may be following, although 
the Latin “ueri praeuia luminis”, gives most of the clue. It frequently happens that when 
Walton is literal in his translation, he necessarily comes close to Chaucer’s consistently literal 
version. 

73. anon to pis. Latin, usque ad huc; Chaucer, “hider to”. Cp. Richard the Redeless 
ii:126. “anon to the skynnes”. See 151 below. 

77. byknowen. So the Balliol MS. Harley 43 reads wnknowen, which gives better 
sense than either Balliol, or Royal’s we knowen. 

89. Bot, etc. We expect Swiche rather than But; see the Latin, and Chaucer’s “that 
swiche thinges ben doon”, etc. Note Bot in line 86. 

93. Abhomynable. This spelling, which has been attributed to the Latinizing tendencies 
of a later period of English, and explained as a false etymology from ab hominibus, is fairly 
frequent in the Transition. It and other h-forms are regular in the Bodley 263 MS of 
FaPrinces, as ed. by Bergen; and the spelling occurs in Latin. See Ship of Fools 8515. 

100. “For if those things stand formally, to which we have already assented, then thou 
shalt hereafter acknowledge”, etc. 

103. The MSS which I have used read he speketh. Read we speketh? For such a verb- 
form cp. line 100, A 105 ante, etc. The Latin is loguimur; Chaucer, “I speke’’. 

117-119 are inserted. 

123-5. The rime-arrangement here is inaccurate. Walton may have been thinking of 
the sequence in eight-line stanzas, such as he had been writing. 

125. cariage. Boethius vehiculis, Chaucer sledes. 

128-133. This passage of Boethius is used in Chaucer’s HoFame 973-78. 

131. he. Walton’s change of pronoun, from it in line 130, is also in Chaucer. The 
word deviseth, and that line, are inserted for rime; so line 137. 

133. The Latin is “nubesque postergum videt”. 

139-40. Chaucer says “the olde colde Saturnus”. See Thebes prol. line 3, “Satourn olde 
with his frosty face”. 

145-47 are padded by Walton. 

146. be holden. Shall we read he beholdeth, or insert al to remedy this short line, taking 
be holden as are held? 

148 is not in Boethius nor in Chaucer, and the rest of the stanza is padded. 

152. The pronouns are confusing. He here and in 155 refers to God; the other cases 
of he, and the his of 152, refer to the mind. 

158, 159 are closely bound; read with comma after place. The word reduce here, as 
frequently in the Transition, means to lead back; see Lydgate’s Troy Book ii:183. 


4 


402 NOTES [PAGE 60 


HOCCLEVE 


LA MALE REGLE 


1. Hoccleve opens with a paean in praise of Hygeia or Health; but his lyrical note is not 
supported by “aureate language”, as often in medieval prologues; see Ripley’s Compend of 
Alchemy or the Court of Sapience. 

5. aduersitee, adverse action. So line 47 and in Regement of Princes 390. 

22. feeste fro penaunce. “Now I can tell the difference between a feast-day and a fast- 
day ; but when I was in health I made none.” 

31. lym... gore. The term “gore” for “gown” is frequent in the romances; the word 
“lym” was interpreted by Mason as “active instrument”. Cp. our “limb of the law’.—‘“His 
hand should not have clutched my sleeve.” 

36. put... assay, “tried it”. 

38. But what! Cp. Quid enim! e.g. in Philippians i:18 or in WBTale 58. Very frequent 
in medieval rhetorical writers. 

39. With the alliteration cp. 220 below. 

50. holde ...%m chief. Tenure in capite, or direct holding from the lord of the soil, 
implied under the feudal system homage or “reverence”. The tenant, as a vassal, swore alle- 
giance and obedience. 

62. inprudence. Mason writes imprudence, the EETS inpudence. 

63. curse... & warie. Doublets are frequent in Hoccleve; see Regement 2304, 2422, 
2490, 2546-7, 2663, 2803, etc. 

67. Regnynge which is an ablative absolute. 

70. Instead of resoun, as in the MS and in Mason, the EETS reads reform. 

78. brydillees, without bridle. See note on Epithalamium 88, Cavendish 1348. 

79. hony and gall. This is a very frequent antithesis in late Middle English literature. 
The “two tuns” of Fortune or of Jupiter contained the sweet and the bitter; see Lydgate’s 
ResonandSens 50 ff., Troy Book ii:65, DuobMercat 697 ff., Gower’s Confessio vi:330 ff., also 
Lydgate’s many references to sugar as hiding gall, eg. FaPrinces A 243 and note. 

85. Salomon wroot. See Prov. xi:14, xv:22, xx:18, xxiv:6. See Hoccleve’s Dialogue 
451-2. 

95. rype ... pit. See Hoccleve’s Complaint 266; see Chaucer’s MerchTale 157. 

106. in tyme, at regular hours. Cp. 110 below. 

113. The custume, the custom-house, or receipt of custom, i.e., the gluttonous mouth. 

121. Bachus and his lure. The bush of Bacchus, the accepted sign of a wine-shop, is com- 
pared to the “lure” or bit of leather garnished with feathers which was used by fowlers to 
induce the soaring hawk to return. This line I would punctuate otherwise than in the EETS 
ed., with no comma after lure, but a comma after Bachus. 

126-8. With outen daunger, without any compulsion. ‘Unless I was so heavily in debt 
or so pressed with business” etc. Note the rime of hye me:tyme, with an apparently silent 
-e in the verb. 

130. Cp. London Lickpenny, p. 238 here. 

138. Cp. SqTale 264, “—lusty Venus children dere”. The phrase “fressh repeir” means 
“ively visiting”’. 

143. Poules heed, the sign of a tavern, the Paul’s Head. 

146. wafres thikke, cakes substantial or abundant. 

149. for the maistrie. See Prol. to CantTales 165. Tyrwhitt noted that old medical books 
applied the phrase pour la maistrie to remedies which were super-excellent. See Hoccleve’s 
Dialogue 565. 

150. warme with. The word-order here is modern, not as in Thebes 35 and refs. there. 

173 ff. “And yet my will (to blame others) was good, if I could have managed to suppress 
my cowardice.” Cp. Pope, Epistle to Arbuthnot, line 203, “Willing to wound, and yet afraid 
to strike”. 

188. priueseel, the Privy Seal office, where Hoccleve was employed. Apparently the 
clerks dwelt there. See line 300. 


PAGE 63] LA MALE REGLE 403 


193. “Because the roads were rutted and muddy’, Hoccleve would pay a boatman and 
go by the river. 

197. The EETS word-order is wrong. 

202. in myn audience, in my hearing. Hoccleve is shrewd, although vain. 

211. faueles tonge. The tongue of Favel or Flattery is again alluded to in lines 223, 244, 
247, 284, 287. All medieval treatises on the governance of princes are strenuous against flattery; 
see for example Hoccleve’s own Regement lines 3039 ff., 4446 ff. Dante put flatterers deep 
down in hell, see Inferno xviii. On favel see Skeat’s note to Piers Plowman, C-text iii:6. 

233. book of nature of beestes. This is not Albertus Magnus’ De naturis animalium, 
where the chapter on Sirens, book xxv chap. 53, is very brief and bald. It seems to be rather 
from Theobaldus’ Physiologus de naturis duodecim animalium; there the chapter De Syrene 
contains all the descriptive matter which Hoccleve gives, and this is followed by an “allegoriz- 
ing” of the siren’s “natura biformis” to mean human duplicity of character, smooth speech 
and injurious action. When here speaking of flattery, Hoccleve might well recall this inter- 
pretation of the siren’s wiles. See note on 249 below. 

236, 240. spekth, swich. So the MS and Mason; the EETS reads spekith, which. 

249. Holcote. The story of Ulysses and the Sirens is told by Robert of Holkot (died 
1349) in his commentary Super Sapientiam Salomonis, lectio 64. Holkot is discussing 
“dangers of the sea’; he describes the Sirens, who he says were three in number, and gives 
an allegorical interpretation, saying that “moraliter Vlixes sapiens interpretatur et designat 
mentem in qua prudentia inhabitare debet.’’ Another “danger of the sea” described is Circe, 
for whom Holkot refers to Boethius bk. iv, metre 3. Hoccleve has possibly another use of 
Holkot in lines 300-04, see Note. 

258. prudence. Mason reads providence, wrongly. 

265. A nay. Mason Ah nay; EETS As nay, for which emphatic negative cp. Roberte 
the Deuyll, in Hazlitt’s EEPopPo i:860. The MS has a peculiar punctuation mark after 
A; see p. 60 ante. 

269. a myte ... deere, “too expensive, if valued at a mite”. 

270. priuee and appert, privately and openly. The lord favors the adroit courtier both 
when alone and in public. 

280. “And he bids him begone quickly, with bad luck to him.” 

294. The comma inserted by the EETS editor disturbs the sense. 

301. malencolie. Melancholy, or black bile, was one of the four “humors” of the body, 
the others being blood, phlegm, and choler. The preponderance of any one humor determined 
the “complexion” of the individual, whether sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, or melancholic. 
If this preponderance of black bile were not excessive, the ‘melancholic’ man was distin- 
guished by steadiness of purpose and soundness of judgment, e.g., Hector. But in excess 
the melancholic temperament meant sullenness, jealousy, obstinacy. 

300-04. The rhetorical device here employed, the linking of stages up to a climax, is 
termed gradatio: see the pseudo-Ciceronian treatise Ad Herennium, the source of so much 
medieval rhetorical principle, pp. 326-27. It may be noted that this particular passage is 
cited, as from Tullius, in the same commentary of Holkot which Hoccleve used for lines 
249 ff. above. See lectio 84 of Holkot. 

305. “Let us go on to the next point, late hours.” 

312. cam. So the MS and Mason. The EETS reads can. 

319-20. Note the lively management. 

321. Prentys and Arondel, companions of Hoccleve. These two names appear in a peti- 
tion of 1431; see Proceedings of the Privy Council iv:77, cited EETS ed. of Hoccleve, i:page 
xxxv note. Other fellow-clerks are named in the supplication To Somer, sce p. 66 here. 

349. My thank is qweynt, “gratitude due me is all wiped out.” 

354. old Clerkes, etc. See Chaucer’s Melibeus, B 2405; cp. Dance Macabre 344 and the 
French, line 272. 

380. The MS omits an, which is supplied in brackets. See Hoccleve’s poem for Chichele, 
EETS 1:67, line 20; see the WBprol. 659, Lydgate’s Troy Book ii:4043. 

391. so do. MS and Mason thus; EETS reads do so. 


404 NOTES [PAGE 66 


417. the Fourneval. Thomas Nevil, lord Fournival, was in 1405 appointed subtreasurer, 
with Sir John Pelham. 

421. theschequeer, the Exchequer, from which office Hoccleve’s yearly ten pounds was 
paid in instalments; he is asking for that due at Michaelmas, “Michel,” September 29. 

423. The Latin side note is: Annus ille fuit annus restrictionis annuitatum. The “ferne 
yeer”, or previous year, is evidently overdue also. 

430. estaat real, royal power. 

432. Wherfore. So the MS and Mason; the EETS reads Therfore. 

442. Shameth. Mason reads Shunneth, incorrectly. 

446. Cp. Lydgate’s Letter to Gloucester, stanzas 1 and 6, p. 149 here. 


TO SOMER 


This half-jesting, half-earnest, and wholly punning supplication to Sir Henry Somer, the 
subtreasurer, must have been sent later than 1408, when Somer was appointed a baron of the 
Exchequer. Its exact date is uncertain, although it was obviously sent at Christmas-time. 

It was printed by Mason, by Morley, in EETS ed. i:59, and in Neilson and Webster 
p. 204. Its first three stanzas are on three rimes, and are linked by’ rime. 

12-14. Read with a stop after Just, and then paraphrase “According to the maturity of our 
fruits, last Michaelmas was the time of year for the harvest of our seed.” Evidently the 
previous quarter’s salary was unpaid, for all four men. 

20-22. “Whether our accounting shall soon make us sail with our ship to a safe harbor. 
For the pun on ships cp. Letter to Gloucester line 17 and note; the English gold noble and 
half-noble bore the stamp of a ship. “If you list” begins a new sentence. 

25-6. Offorde. See note on this man by Kern in Anglia 40 :374. 

33 ff. This roundel is in almost the briefest form possible to that metrical type; see note 
on lines 57-73 of the Lover’s Mass here, where other late MidEng. roundels are listed. Three 
more by Hoccleve are printed in this volume. 


” 


TO CARPENTER 


The person to whom this poem is addressed was probably John Carpenter, town clerk of 
London 1417-1438, a man of large means and a public benefactor. It was he, for instance, who 
according to Stow paid for the painting-up of Lydgate’s Dance Macabre text in the cloisters 
of old St. Paul’s. 

The poem was printed by Mason, and in EETS ed. 1:63. 

8. This “expression” refers to the line of initials in the margin, representing the creditors 
of Hoccleve, who would fain be “even” with him, that is, clear up their accounts. 

22-4. Hoccleve begs Carpenter to stand surety for him, and prevent his arrest for debt. 

23. The MS has not hem. 

27-8. The meaning seems to be: “However completely you may settle the business, and 
however speedily, I can permit that for the ending of my anxiety.” 


THREE ROUNDELS 


From among the many begging-letters and laments for money-scantness in this period, cp. 
here Froissart’s Dit dou Florin, a dialogue with the last coin in his purse. The French poem 
is however of 490 lines; see Scheler’s ed. of Froissart, ii :220-34. 

In these roundels, note that the scribe has not filled out the repetition of the first member, 
which is characteristic of the form; he writes only a word or two of it. 

The poems are printed EETS ed., vol. ii, and earlier in Academy for 1892, i:542. For 
(3) see EETS ed. i, foot of xxxviii. 


(1) 


6. streite. Read with a following question-mark. MHoccleve tells Lady Money that when 
she was shut up in his purse he never kept her close pent,—far from it, he let her out. 


PAGE 68] ROUNDELS: DIALOGUE 405 


11. saillen. Perhaps again an allusion to the ship stamped on the English gold coins. See 
note on line 21 of the poem To Somer. 
13. right a feynt, a right feigned, i.e. a mere show of good spirits. 


(2) 


5. cheertee. This word is much used by Hoccleve. It means “affection, value’; the 
phrase here is “thou settest no store by me”. 

7-8. “At the urge of your excessive expenditure I became extravagant (or dissolute).” 
The word delauee is also used by Hoccleve in Jereslaus’ Wife line 901, in the Regement 4624; 
and it occurs in line 40 of the Ballad of Good Counsel printed by Skeat vii:286. It was used 
by Chaucer in the Parson’s Tale; and it is in Laurent’s' French transl. of the De Casibus ii 
chap. 14, a passage which Lydgate materially changes. Chatterton took up the word, writing 
it as deslavate, and using the substantive deslavatie. 

10,12. After each of these lines read a question-mark. 


(3) 


With this burlesque of a lover’s “praise of my lady” cp. the Balade Plesaunte and the 
poem beginning O Mossie Quince, both in MS Trin.Coll.Cambr. R 3, 19 and both printed 
thence as noted in my Chaucer Manual, pp. 428,442. On a very reduced scale, this is a 
feature-by-feature description, recognized as code in medieval court-poems lauding a beloved 
lady. Such may be seen in Matthew of Vendome’s Ars Versificatoria (ed. Faral, pp. 129-30), 
or in Geoffrey de Vinsauf’s Nova Poetria, ibid., lines 563 ff. of the text, or in the Archi- 
trenius of Johannes de Altavilla bk. ii, or in Alanus’ Anticlaudianus i chap. 7, or in the 
Historia Troiana of Guido delle Colonne where Helen is described. On the last-named 
it may be noted that when Lydgate in his Troy Book reaches that point (ii:3643 ff.) he says 
lines 3676-77, that Guido depicts Helen “by ordre ceryously From hed to foot’, but that he 
has no sufficient English, wherefore (3689-90) he refers his readers to Guido. A clumsy 
imitation of the method is made by the fifteenth-century author of the poem “How A Lover 
Praiseth his Lady”, printed ModPhil 21:379-95, which see for notes on medieval modes of 
description. 

7-8. pentice, etc. Her nose is a penthouse, which keeps the rain out of her mouth even 
were she lying vprightes, ie. on her back. 


DIALOGUE WITH A FRIEND 


(EETS edition i:p. 128) 


The MS here used, Bodl. Selden supra 53, is described with its copy of Lydgate’s Dance 
Macabre, p. 124 here. In this poem it shows a number of minor differences from the Durham 
MS-text printed by the EETS. The word-order differs in lines 502, 525, 540, 548, 559, etc. 
The particles that, it, give the scribe especial trouble; see their omission or insertion in lines 
507, 513, 529, 531, 686, 710, 733, 746, 779; also ther, 757, and thei 776. 

533. now is lieutenant. Gloucester was appointed Lord Lieutenant of the kingdom Dec. 30, 
1419. In early February, 1421, the king returned to England with his newly-wedded queen; in 
early June Gloucester went with Henry to France, and came back the next spring, replacing 
Bedford as regent or lieutenant some time before May, 1422, when Bedford accompanied 
Queen Katherine and the infant prince to France. He held this post until Henry’s death, 
when the king’s will provided for the establishment of a Council during the prince’s minority. 

542-3. The Durham MS printed by the EETS has in the margin: scilicet de secundo redditu 
suo de ffrancia. 

548. with to glade. The usual medieval word-order; see note on Male Régle 150. 

550. The EETS text reads god instead of him. The phrase is an ejaculation. 

561. This MS omits the rime-word Vegece, i.e., Vegetius’ Art of Chivalry, a work highly 
valued in the Middle Ages, and among those recommended by Hoccleve for Oldcastle’s reading 
in place of his dangerous incursions into Holy Writ; see the poem to Oldcastle, line 196 


406 NOTES [PAGE 70 


The work had been translated into French by Jean de Meun and also by Jean de Vignay(?) ; 
into English for Sir Thomas Berkeley in 1408. See the SATF edition of 1897, the Brit.Mus. 
catalogue of Royal MSS under 18 A xii, 20 B xi. The omission of the word is probably due 
to the scribe’s intention of rubricking it later, as was often done with special words. 

563. A headless line. 

565. for the maistrie. See note on Male Régle 149. 

566. Bygonde, etc. “Beyond (the sea) he hath wel proved”, etc. 

567. Chirburgh. See note on line 576 below. 

573. Duke Herry. As no prince of the blood royal, fighting in France, bore the name 
Henry, I would interpret this allusion as to Henry the Fourth, whom Hoccleve may call 
“duke” to distinguish him from the reigning king. The words this prince, in line 574, are 
then in the nominative case. 

576. Costantin. The district of the Cotentin, or outer peninsula of Normandy, was over- 
run by Gloucester after Easter 1418; he encountered serious resistance only at Cherbourg, 
which stood a fairly long siege, surrendering October first. 

577. bi preising. EETS ed. reads hy preysynge. 

579. a worthi stile, a dignified title or reputation. 

581. The EETS has no and that is. 

583. Note the metaphor. 

587-8. “Lest I might perchance reduce his credit, if through my ignorance (ignorantly) 
I should enumerate (i.e. understate) them.” The word allege has in late Mid.Eng. a meaning 
of “lighten, reduce”, although it is thus applied usually to pain or misery, as in Lover’s Mass 
160. Cp. Chaucer’s Troilus iv :802-5. 

586-7. Humfrey, interpreted as “homme ferai’. This mode of elucidation is characteris- 
tically medieval. Hoccleve exaggerates it into a “conceit” in his Complaint of the Virgin 
Mary, EETS ed. i, p. 6; but a very marked example of the method is Giovanni del Virgilio’s 
explanation of the name Prometheus as from “pro id est provisio, me id est mentis, theus id est 
divine, unde prometheus id est provisio divine mentis.” (See Dante and Giov. del Virgilio, 
by Wicksteed and Gardner, 1902, p. 318.) Compare Holkot’s fantasy on Ave, the first word 
of the Salutation to Mary, as a reversal of Eva, the source of human unhappiness; the passage 
is in lectio 195 of the Commentary on Sapience, a book cited by Hoccleve in Male Régle 249,— 
see note. Chaucer “interprets” the name Melibeus, see line 2600 of that Tale. 

592 ff. “Warlike Mars, at his birth, gave him that name” etc. Mars presided over Hum- 
phrey’s birth, says Hoccleve. 

610 ff. Apparently the words O lorde are an ejaculation, with no reference to an earthly 
nobleman. Read them with a question-mark after dide, line 613, and interpret “whether 
fere or cowardyse” as “Was it fear or cowardice ?”’—an ironical question. Gloucester’s daring 
at the siege of Rouen is described in John Page’s (contemporary) poem, written by an eye- 
witness; it is pubd. by the Camden Society, where, on p. 11, we find:— 


Glouceter that gracyus home 

From the sege of Chirborough he come 
At the Port Synt Hyllarye 

Fulle manfully loggyd he 

In caste of stone in schot of quarelle 
He dradde hym for noo perelle 

But wanne worschyppe with his werre 
And lay hys enmys fulle nerre 
Thanne any man that there was 

Be xl rode and more in spas. 


Later in the same poem we read that the besieged’s shots wrought much damage to the 
English,—“‘And namely Gloucester that lord so dere, For he was loggyd them so nere.” 

613. dide. Read with question-mark after dide. Cp. Lydgate’s FaPrinces ix :3423, “As 
Petrark did, and also Iohn Bochas”. Or the confession of the Earl of Cambridge after dis- 
covery of the conspiracy against Henry the Fifth, that certain men knew not of the extent 
of the plan, “but Grey dyd”. See Rymer’s Foedera, ix :300-01. 


PAGE 71] DIALOGUE 407 


616. what is an exclamation. 

620. ascance. Shakespeare, Lucrece 637, uses askance as a verb,—“turn away”. Can it 
here have the meaning “Begone!”? In the Court of Sapience ii:1167 we find: “Myght saye 
askaunce on thys wyse be I wyll’’; which I would interpret as “Go to! I shall be as I am 
moved to be!” The student will distinguish between this word and ascaunces, meaning as if, 
for which cp. Chaucer’s Troilus i:292, translating Boccaccio’s Quasi. 

623. ministrith. An imperative ;—“give me some!” Read with pause after Can I in 622, 
comma after you here. 

626. Read with a question-mark after of. 

631. In the EETS ed. this line has no to, and Furnivall interprets that as meaning what, 
i.e., “what book”. 

638-42. Cp. Chaucer’s Troilus i:1065 ff., a passage which Kittredge has shown to be from 
Geoffroi de Vinsauf’s Nova Poetria 43-45. 

640. mental ye. This phrase, and inward sight, are frequent in Lydgate. See FaPrinces 1:17, 
v :453, Troy Book ii:2138, 3180, iv:177, 5045, v:51, 815, 1709, 3059, 3447. Cp. Chaucer’s 
MLTale 454-5; and cp. Isidor’s Etymologiae xi:1,20, where the power of sight is divided 
as “externa aetherea luce aut interno spiritu lucido”’. See St. Augustine, Confess. vii:ch. 17; 
see Boethius, Consol. Philos. iii, metr. 11. 

643, 657, 662. The EETS ed. reads for the deffaute, I now byseeche, Syn now, ete. 

669. quarter sak, a sack holding a quarter of a hundredweight, double the usual size. 

675. The EETS ed. reads mis-berynge. 

691. make partie, “put up a fight”. 

694. The wyf of Bathe. See WBTale 81, 88. 

721. evere. EETS ay. 

724. See Genesis iii:15. 

727-8. Hoccleve’s hand with a jest against women is lighter than Lydgate’s. 

733-34. See Genesis iii:16. 

736. See the conclusion of the Wife of Bath’s prologue. 

751. “for the sake of him that died,” i.e. “In God’s name, how am I at fault?” 

752. The EETS ed. reads dar I me auante, i.e., “I dare assert”. 

755, 756. The EETS reads largeliche, swart wrooth. 

759. for youre fader kyn, a common asseveration; see its use by the Host, headlink to 
the MoTale, 43. 

764 ff. Cp. Chaucer ProlCantTales 731 ff. 

772. conpleiningly, under protest. Cp. Lydgate’s expressions of reluctant disgust as he 
translates attacks on women in the Troy Book, e.g., i1:2100, ii1:3560. 

778. EETS ed. reads woot I neuere, ete. 

780-2. Note the quick crisp dialogue here. The only bit comparable in Lydgate is the 
dispute between Boccaccio and Brunhilda, FaPrinces ix :190 ff.; but that moves in much larger 
courses, and is a translation. Cp. Chaucer’s dialogue in the BoDuchesse, especially 749-57, 
1045 ff., 1308-10. 

789. kut to kepe. The NED says that this phrase is “of obscure origin’, and suggests 
that it means “keep your distance, be reserved”. The earliest cited case is from the Coventry 
Play of the Woman Taken in Adultery; the culprit is told by her captors that she shall be 
taught “bettyr to kepe thi kutte”. The next case is this passage, then Skelton’s Philip Sparrow 
118. It seems to me that in all these cases a better interpretation is “be on guard, mind 
yourself”. 

791. EETS has no nowe. 

806. as wisly god me blesse. An asseveration. 

810. bite me the crowe. Perhaps “May I die!” i.e., may crows or carrion birds peck me! 

818-19. Note the like rime. Provided the two words were different parts of speech, the 
usage was allowable in Middle English. It was very common, and unrestricted, in French; note 
the greater frequency of such rimes in e.g. Chaucer’s Book of the Duchesse as compared with 
his later work. 


408 NOTES [PAGE 74 


820. Romayn dedis, the Gesta Romanorum, a Latin collection of anecdotes and tales, of 
the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century; author uncertain. It is discussed by Warton in 
a special section of his HistEngPoetry, see ed. by Hazlitt i:238 ff., and was: used by Gower, 
Hoccleve, and Shakespeare. The Latin is ed. by W. Dick, Leipzig 1890, earlier by Oesterley. 
An Eng. prose translation is in MS Harley 7333, etc., ed. by Sir F. Madden for the Roxburghe 
Club, ed. EETS 1879. Modern Engl. transl. by Charles Swan, N. Y., 1924. 

826. sope. Manufactured in England in the fourteenth century. The word is used in 
the transl. of Jeremiah ii:22 and of Malachi iii:2, and means there a lye, or water alkalised by 
vegetable ashes. The Vulgate word in both cases is herba. 


IN PRAISE OF CHAUCER 
(from the Regement of Princes) 


1956. ffadir, i.e., the old beggar with whom Hoccleve has been talking, who has advised 
him to write. 

1968. synguleer. This word, in Chaucer and in Middle English, meant “separate, single, 
private, especial”. Cp. FaPrinces A 447 here,—“to censure in especial”; cp. the phrase “syngu- 
leer bataile’” as “single combat”, ibid. ii:4305, and that of “syngular profites” as “individual 
advantages”, ibid. ii1:1249. In St. Albon ii:92 we read “Not singuler founde nor yet parciall’”. 
And note the tautology in FaPrin. iii :2258,—“a special syngulerte”. 

1971. He name. Read His name; the scribe errs. 

1978. I ment is one word, the past participle meant. See 2090, 2100. 

2083. Death is treated as feminine in this line and in 2099, 2101, 2103, 2105. 

2090. I now is one word, i.e., enough. Cp. I leche, i.e., yliche, “alike”, in 2100. 

2091-92. “I would that that cumberworld were slain.” 

2096-97. The syntax is muddled, but the meaning is: “No more, as experience shows, 
(to) an excellent faithful servant than to a vicious lord.” 

2105. nedes do moot sche. Compare Guillaume de Machaut, in the Jugement de Roy de 
Behaingne 730, of Fortune’s variance,—‘“Car elle fist dou faire son devoir”, etc. See Chaucer’s 
handling, BoDuchesse 675-82. See Boethius ii prose 1. 

4978 ff. Hoccleve says that Chaucer has discussed the keeping of the Sabbath holy, 
and that a prince who would be obeyed by his subjects must obey God’s command on this 
point and on others. See the Parson’s Tale 667. 

4987. ful many a lyne. Of poems by Chaucer to the Virgin we have the A. B. C., the 
Invocation at the opening of the Second Nun’s Tale, and the Prioress’ prayer at the be- 
ginning of her Tale. 

4995-8. here his likinesse. The portrait of Chaucer which appears on the margin of a few 
MSS of the Regement at this point is our most authentic representation of him. That of the 
codex Harley 4866 is closely duplicated in the volume formerly Phillipps 1099, now in the 
hands of Dr. Rosenbach of New York City; and although a half-length, it is apparently the 
same picture as the Sloane portrait in the National Portrait Gallery and the “Clarendon” 
portrait, which are full-length. An identical full-length is on the single sheet of vellum 
marked MS Adds. 5141 in the British Museum; and the only difference of type between them 
and the half-length as here is that the MS-artist has turned the right hand of Chaucer from 
the penner which hangs upon his breast to point at the stanza mentioning his likeness. In 
MS Royal 17 D vi’s copy of the Regement the portrait on the margin is quite other than 
these, a full-length in another pose; see its reproduction in Spielmann’s Portraits of Chaucer 
to face p. 120, and see reprods. ibid., of other Chaucer portraits. Most MSS of the Regement 
are without the picture; it has been cut out of Harley 4826, but was never in Brit.Mus. Adds. 
18632, Arundel 59, Harley 116, Harley 372, Royal 17 C xiv, Royal 17 D xviii, Royal 
17 D xix, Sloane 1212, Sloane 1825, Ashmole 40, Dugdale 45. Regarding the Regement-MSS 
of the University Library, Cambridge, and of Cambridge colleges, I cannot speak; but 
neither the official catalogues nor Spielmann’s monograph mention the existence of a Chaucer- 
portrait in any of them, as is also the case with the two McClean MSS in the Fitzwilliam 
Museum, Cambridge. 


PAGE 104] THE CHURL AND THE BIRD 409 


Brit.Mus.Arundel 38, the gift-copy to Prince Henry of Hoccleve’s poem has on fol. 37 
a miniature of Hoccleve presenting the book; but leaf 91, which probably carried a portrait of 
Chaucer, has been cut out, and with it lines 4990-5042. The leaf was lacking in Urry’s time; 
see preface to the 1721 Chaucer. 


THE CHURL AND THE BIRD 


1. Problemes, etc. The MSS Harley, Caligula, and Trinity read as here; Lansdowne and 
Hh read Problemys liknessis and figures, Hh altering the last word to signes. The subject 
has no verb; should we omit And from line 3 we get a predicate. 

6-9. Like as the Bibyll. See Judges ix :8-15. 

13. tarage. See note on line 350 below. 

15. Poetes Laureat. Lydgate is alluding to Aesop, whom he terms “this poyet laureat” 
in the prologue to his version of some of the Fables. The name was given in the late 
Middle Ages to a man honored by an University degree, eg., Bernard André the blind 
historiographer of Henry VII, Whitinton the grammarian, Skelton; or it was applied to 
eminent poets generally. Higden so terms Homer; Burgh, in his letter to Lydgate, applies 
the word to Boccaccio; in his Kingis Quair, stanza 197, King James applies it to Gower and 
to Chaucer; Dunbar in his Golden Targe uses it of Lydgate. See introd. to Skelton here. 

29. Lydgate here comments on the use of the “fable” to convey a lesson; this was the 
accepted medieval and Christian view of literature, especially of poetry. See e.g. FaPrinces 
iii :3830-31, where the French original says that poetry, like Holy Scripture, reveals “soubz 
couerture de figures . . . . les choses advenir’. Boccaccio at this point has:—“ignari 
plerique existiment . . . . poetas mendaces et fabulosos homines esse . . . Sola 
quantum humane imbecillitati possibile est sancte pagine vestigia sequi conata. Nam prout 
illa divine mentis arcana prophetis futura que sub figurarum tegmine reserauit, sic et hoc 
celsos suorum conceptus sub figmentorum velamine tradere orsa est.” 

Hawes in his Pastime 659-665 recognizes this as the correct procedure, but he laments 
ibid. 737 ff. that the dull rude people fail to understand the method. Nevill in his envoy line 
14 states that his “humble style’ is due to his having worked “without cloke’. 

35. paunflete, pamphlet. The uses of this word by Hoccleve, RegPrinces 2060, and by 
Lydgate here, are two of the earliest in English. See Skelton, Garland 491. 

43-44. Cp. Henryson, Fables 1944-45—“Quhilum thair wynnit in a wildernes. As myne 
authour expresli can declair.” 

50 ff. See Skelton in his Garland, stanzas 93, 94, 95. 

51. couerd. This reading, coueryd, is also in MSS Hh and Kk; Harley, Trinity, and 
Lansdowne have turued, and Caligula clowryd. See the turfed seats pictured in the Roman 
de la Rose, reproduced from MS in Amherst-Cecil’s history of gardening in England, ed. of 
1910, to face pp. 50, 56. Cp. Chaucer’s Troilus ii:820-22 for Cressida’s garden; cp. the 
“benched herber grene” in Black Knight 125-6. In Wordsworth’s Descriptive Sketches 19 
sod seats are mentioned. 

52. There is no verb for condites. 

53-4. ayenst the sonne shene. The same phrase is in Troy Book i:1268; cp. ibid. ii:2460, 
and cp. the rivers of FaPrinces i:577-78. Running water was a necessary furnishing of a 
medieval garden. 

55. burbly. This is the only case given in NED. 

56. shewing. We expect a finite verb. 

59. gold were, golden wire. The likening of hair to gold wire is a very frequent simile 
in Lydgate and in later poets; Schick, note on Temple of Glass 271, cannot trace the com- 
parison earlier. See Troy Book i:1977, 2042, ii:4741-2, iii:4125, iv :6424, etc. 

60, 61. If these lines were transposed the order of thought would be clearer. 

68. Alceste. With this mention of the wife of Admetus as if she were a star, the 
daystar, cp. Chaucer’s Legend, prol. (A) 513-15,— 


410 NOTES [PAGE 105 


No wonder is thogh Jove hir stellifye 
As tellith Agaton, for hir goodnesse 
Hir whyte coroun berth of hit witnesse. 


The writer Agaton has been no further identified than by Sandras, who suggested (Etude 
sur Chaucer 115-16), that an Agaton might be meant whose comedy “The Flower”, now 
unknown, is mentioned in Aristotle's Poetics. With the Chaucerian passage cp. Lydgate’s 
allusions to the daisy as Alceste’s flower, Secrees 1305-6, and Looke in thy Mirour, printed 
Halliwell, p. 161. In TemGlass 70-74 he mentions the transformation of Alceste into a 
daisy. Cp. Court of Love 103-5. Gower’s treatment of Alceste, Confessio vii:1917-43, is 
very brief and bald, as is that of Fulgentius in his Mythologiae. 

It may be noted that Shirley, in his compendium of the Legend, the “Cronycle made 
by Chaucier”, copied in MS Ashmole 59, confuses Alcestis and Alcyone in his last stanza. 
Printed Chaucer Soc., Odd Texts, pp. vi ff. 

73. sugred. See notes on Thebes 52 and FaPrinces A 243. 

74. draw along, drawn along, prolonged. See Walton A 288, C 33, FaPrinces ii:900, v :659. 

75. that all the wood rong. Cp. PoFoules 491-4, FlLeaf 100, BlKnight 45, Troy Book 
1:3933, Cuckoo 99-100, Kingis Quair stanza 33. Marie de France in her fable “De volucribus 
et rege eorum’”, line 12, says “Kar tut le bois fist retentir’”. 

76. ‘This line read in Longleat “On the morowe”, etc. The corrector struck out On 
and wrote Tyl. Cp. Troy Book iv:4024, “Til on a morwe whan Phebus shoon ful bri3t”, 
and a nearly identical line FaPrinces v:1524. Also St.Albon i:349 and cp. Chaucer’s Legend 
773. Cp. also Thebes 4014, FaPrinces iii :2383. 

87-8. See Barclay, Eclogue iv :63, p. 317 here. 

96 ff. Here and 120 ff., cp. the Manciple’s Tale 59-70; cp. Boethius’ Consolatio, iii metre 
2:19 ff. 

115. MSS Linc. and Lansd. read morwenyng, Caligula in the gray mornynge. 

122. wastel breed. This was the food of the Prioress’ little dogs, CTprol. 147. 

124-6. See Lydgate’s Aesop, fable i:174-5 (Zupitza) :— 


Set more store I haue hit of nature 
Among rude chaffe to shrape for my pasture. 


132. bere at the stake. Bear-baiting was a popular pastime in England earlier than 
Elizabeth’s time. 

143. maugre thyn hede, “in spite of you’. See KnTale 311, NPTale 592, WBTale 31, 
and often. 

145. Cp. Parlament of Byrdes 69-70, ed. Hazlitt in EEPopPoetry iii :167:— 


For the byrde that can not speake nor syng 
Shall to the kytchyn to serue the kynge. 


162. Cp. Lydgate’s St.Margaret 216, “Trust me welle this no feyned tale”. 

175. lyme twiggis (see line 192). Limed twigs were smeared with birdlime, a viscous 
preparation made from the bark of holly (NED) to hold the feet of birds fast. See Piers 
of Fulham as below, line 185 note. 

177. fetters. The Longleat MS reads feders, feathers. Cp. PoFoules 346, where the 
Oxford MSS change eles, “eels”, to egles, “eagles”; and ibid. 521, 588, where some MSS 
change faconde, “eloquent”, to faucon, “falcon”, under pressure of the many bird-allusions of 
the poem. Note also the Trin.Coll. text of Lydgate’s fable of the Wolf and the Lamb, where, 
in line 85, the scribe has altered the correct wole, ‘wool’, to wolf. 

182. treacle, triacle, a remedy, “theriacum”; originally an antidote against poison. A 
dignified word in this period, often applied by Lydgate to Christ or to the Virgin; now 
transferred to a substance resembling in appearance the liquid in which the medieval remedy 
was given. 

185-6. Cp. Kingis Quair stanza 135,—‘“For as the foulere quhistlith in his throte Diuersely 
to counterfete the brid And feynis mony a suete and strange note That in the busk for his 


PAGE 107] THE CHURL AND THE BIRD 411 


desate is hid Til sche be fast lokin his net amyd.” Cp. Piers of Fulham, in Hazlitt’s 
EEPopPo ii:94-96. 

206-7. See Lydgate’s Thebes 3447-49. 

209-10. clymbe to high, etc. One of Lydgate’s most frequent metaphors, especially in 
his Fall of Princes; it depends on Fortune’s wheel. Other MSS read—torne felyth oft his 
fall vnsoft. 

213-14. Hawes’ Example of Virtue, stanza 59, has “For a thing lost without recover 
Look that thou never be too pensive.” 

220. Cp. Chaucer’s) Legend, B-prol. 134 ff.,—“hem thoughte hit did hem good To singe 
of him, and in hir song despyse The foule cherl that for his covetyse Had hem betrayed 
with his sophistrye.” 

227. MSS Linc., Lansd., Hh, read “riht to pleyne & maken dool”; Trinity has—“com- 
pleyn & make”, etc.; Harley has “to compleyn and make”, etc. See Troy Book i:1918, 
“bou mygtest wel compleyne and make dool.” 

232. Iagounce. The French poem has “Qui apelee est Iacintus Vne once peise bien ou plus.” 
See descr. of the stone Hyacinthus in Evax, De Gemmis. This work (transl. by Moller, 
Wittenberg, 1574) is cited by Lydgate in his fable of the Cock and Precious Stone, so 
closely related to this poem. Evax, “rex Arabum’, is there mentioned by name, as in the 
Italian L’Intelligenza, a fourteenth-century poem. See lines 152 ff. of Lydgate’s fable, 
Archiv, vol 85. 

239 ff. Cp. the virtues of “jasp” as listed by Henryson in his Fables 120 ff. 

259. perry ... garnade. Old French pierrerie, precious stones. Garnade, ie. Granada, 
was under the Moorish dynasty of the Nasrides, 1238-1492, the seat of a brilliant civilization, 
the wealthiest of Spanish cities, and the centre of the European jewel-trade. See Garl. 485. 

260 ff. A favorite theme with Lydgate. Cp. his fable of the Cock and Precious Stone 
lines 187 ff.— 

Thus euery byng foloweb hys nature 
Pryncys to reygne knyghtys for batayll 
Plowmen for tylpe shypmen forto sayll. 


See also his poem with refrain “Thus euery thyng draweth to his semblable’, in Harley 2251 
and Ashmole 59, of which a stanza is cited in note on line 351 below; see a similar poem 
with the refrain “Utter thy Langage”, in Halliwell MinPo, p. 173; see FaPrinces iii :3786-3822, 
and the original in Laurent’s French, iii chap. 14. See Barclay, Ecl. iv:325 ff., as here. 

266. lapidary. Chaucer, HoFame 1352, refers to the “Lapidaire”. Various catalogues of 
precious stones and their virtues were current in the Middle Ages. That of “Evax rex 
Arabum” is cited in note on line 232 above; that of Marbodus, bishop of Rennes in the 
11-12th centuries, was widely known; the material of Isidor, Etymol. xvi cap. 9, and of Vincent 
de Beauvais in his Speculum Naturale, was also much used. See Pannier, Les lapidaires 
francais des xii, xiii, et xiv siécles, Paris, 1882. 

275. This comparison was proverbial for dullness of perception. See Chaucer’s Troilus 
1:731; see his Boethius v prose 4 and Skeat’s note. 

276. For the expression see Chaucer’s Troilus v:1433, KnTale 980; see 340 below. 

280. This was a proverb ;—“Whoever is serf to a boor is wretched”. See 371, 374 below. 

290. The Longleat scribe ignores the peculiarly Lydgatian form of continue, which is 
necessary for rime. 

306. All is not gold, etc. This very old proverb is often cited by Lydgate; see FaPrinces 
iv :2707, 2944, viii:3160; see Midsummer Rose, stanza 2, in Halliwell MinPo, p. 22. Chaucer 
uses the saying in CanYeoTale 409-10. It is found in Alanus’ Parabolae iii:1 as ““Non teneas 
aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum’. 

345. Cp. CantTales prol. 9. 

350. tarage. This word, apparently meaning “character, savor, quality’, is of uncertain 
origin, and is almost exclusively used by Lydgate. Henryson has it once at least, but it 
took no root in the language. 


412 NOTES [PAGE I10 


351 ff. This theme is closely allied to that touched on in line 260 above. Lydgate was 
perhaps influenced by the passage on dreams which Chaucer, PoFoules 99-105, drew from 
Claudian; but he is hardly likely to have known Propertius, Eleg. II, i:43-44, “navita de 
ventis, de tauris narrat arator, Enumerat miles vulnera, pastor oves.” See the theme again 
in the poem mentioned in note on 260 above; I cite from MS Harley 2251, fol. 19b:— 


With philosophres . trete of philosophie 
With the marchant.trete of riches 

With the poete.trete of poetrye 

With gentilmen. trete of gentilnes 

And serve a cherle . aftir his rudenes 
Who currieth hors . resortith to the stable 
Plowman in tilth.sette al theyr besynes 
Thus euery thyng.drawith to his semblable 


356-7. MSS Trinity and Calig. agree with Longleat here; others have line 357 as 356, 
and as 357 have “The hunter to speke of venerye’. 

359. popyngay, parrot. The parrot was in this period valued as an accessory to lux- 
urious life. Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII, paid in July 1502 the sum of 13 shillings 
and fourpence for a parrot, the same sum which she paid the musician Cornish for setting 
a carol in December, 1502, and the same sum which she paid weekly for the diet and clothing 
of her three young kinsfolk, the Courtenay children, with their three servants, in the country. 
See Nicolas’ Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, London, 1830, pp. 62-3, 30, 83. 

363. hensforth my lyvyng. An accusative of duration of time. 

374-5. This proverb is in Skelton’s Garland lines 1418-19, also in Barclay’s transl. of 
Mancini,—“Amonge olde parables this often haue I read, A vilayns subiect, a ielous boyes 
wife And a childes birde are wo and harde bested.” 

379. Goo litil quayeer. On this very old form of envoy see Tatlock in ModPhil. 
18 :115-118. 

380. my maistir. See introduction above. 

385. See note on Cavendish line 52. 


HORNS AWAY 


10. Charbonclis. The carbuncle or ruby, very highly valued by the Middle Ages, was 
believed to emit light in darkness. In the De Planctu Naturae of Alanus, which Lydgate 
quotes just below, we find:—‘Carbunculus, qui solis gerens imaginem, suo radiationis cereo- 
noctis proscribens umbracula” etc. The same is recorded in Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ De Pro- 
prietatibus Rerum, xvi:26; and references to the stone in early French and English are very 
numerous. See Chaucer’s Legend 1119, Lydgate’s Troy Book ii:1027-30, iii:4787-9. Im 
Renaud’s Li Biaus Desconus 1897-1900 a carbuncle lights the castle at night. 

17-22. Aleyn, Alanus de Insulis, died 1202. His De Planctu Naturae is here referred 
to, but not correctly. Lydgate confuses the description of Nature there found with the 
description of Venus in the PoFoules, where Chaucer says that Nature, presiding over the birds, 
is attired as Aleyn describes her; later in the poem, lines 269-73, Chaucer says of Venus that 
she lies covered below the breast with “a subtle kerchef of Valence”. Alanus’ description of 
Nature gave the goddess an elaborate diadem, carefully listing the stones, and a robe, mantle, 
and tunic on which were depicted all living and growing things. Lydgate has fused recol- 
lections, and given Nature as headgear the coverlet of Venus. But in his ResonandSens, 407 ff., 
he follows Alanus. 

23. Texemplyfye, etc. This line is wrongly printed NED, s.v. exemplify, as “I exemple- 
fye”, etc. It is “To exemplify’. 

27. Heleyne, etc. This is a very brief use of the common medieval list. See the Epitha- 
lamium for Gloucester 71 and note. 

32. Ther bewte couthe. Apparently an ablative absolute; “their beauty being so evident’. 
In such case, hornys wer means simply “horns were’, and not “the defence of horns”. 


PAGE 112] BYCORNE AND CHICHEVACHE 413 


37. arche wyves. This phrase is used by Chaucer in the envoy to the Clerk’s Tale, 
where Skeat explains it as “ruling wives’. For arch in this sense the earliest NED citation 
is of 1547; for the sense of “clever, crafty”, the earliest is of 1662. 

45. Peysed. We might conjecture Peysyth here, on the analogy of Yeuyth, line 48, but 
the ablative absolute is very common in Lydgate. 

49. Grettest of vertues, etc. Lydgate says the same thing in his St. Albon 1:480-1,— 
“the chefe founderesse Of all vertues / that called is mekenes.” And in the same poem 
i:487-8, he says that humility “bereth vp all / and hath the souereynte.” Cp. ibid. 493-4. In 
the Wisdom of Solomon x:12 it is godliness, not humility that is “stronger than all”. No 
exact parallel to Lydgate’s phrase is found in Proverbs; but see xv:33, xvi:19, xviii:12. 
Tennyson, in the Holy Grail 145, refers to “True humility, the highest virtue, mother of 
all” ; and his commentator Lester cites Philippians ii:3-8. See James iv:6, lst Peter v:5. 

52. Cp. St. Albon iii:569, “Take hede hereto and yeueth good audience.” 

59-64. There are no predicate verbs for the subjects. 

60. iust convenience, i.e., “by perfect agreement (are) all virtues conjoined.” 

62. roose of Jerycho, etc. See the poem beginning “Queen of heuene” etc., printed by 
MacCracken i:284, line 27:—‘‘Rose of Iherico groweth noon so fressh in May.” 


BYCORNE AND CHICHEVACHE 


It was suggested, p. 114 ante, that the text of this poem in MS Trin.Coll.Cambridge R 
3, 20 was the source of the text as in MS Harley 2251. A possible point against this is the 
appearance of not, line 28, in the later MSS, but lacking in Shirley’s copy; another point is 
the reading of line 98. It should also be noted that Shirley transposed stanzas 2 and 3, marking 
them in the margin as a and 6 for correction; but the Harley scribe paid no attention to this, 
and the false sequence of stanzas as in his text remains in Dodsley, in Montaiglon, in Halli- 
well, in Morley, and in Neilson and Webster. Some of Shirley’s orthographic tricks 
are evident; his eo for long e, as in lines 71, 74, 75, 82, 86, 93, 104, 105, 108, 124, 127; his 
nuwe for newe, 112; his filowing for following as in the margin beside stanza 4; and note 
his frequent inorganic final e, as in cane, frome, etc. 

13. in sentence. This word signified “meaning, import”. So in CTprol 800, “Tales of 
best sentence and most solas”. So in NPTale 345, “Ma dame, the sentence of this Latin is”. 
It could also mean “opinion”, see Troy Book ii:2697, 3006, etc. But the phrase is often 
with Lydgate a mere padding-formula, as here; and see Troy Book i:428. Cp. also Churl 302, 
Horns 15, ResonandSens 6448, FaPrin. i:3316. 

16. foode. The MS wrongly reads foote. 

17. men. The Harley MS omitted this word, and a later hand has inserted, with caret, 
husbondis, the h written badly. Halliwell read this husks never and his error is preserved 
by Montaiglon and by Neilson, but not by Dodsley or by Morley. 

21. The MS reads Lyke luk, etc. 

22. Cp. the French “Bigorne suis en Bigornois’”. See Archiv 114:80. 

31. at be countretayle, in retort. The tally and countertally, two halves of a hazel or ash 
rod, were used in the days before written accounts were common. They were scored across, 
split lengthwise, and given to the two parties in a bargain. When payment was due, the 
tally and countertally were produced. Hence the figurative sense as here and in ClTale envoy. 

32. hewe. The NED interprets this as “to strike’. Its only other citation is from 
Addison. See Doctor Doubble Ale, line 32, in Hazlitt’s EEPopPo iii:316. The usage 
in FlCourtesy 158, Troy Book i:1230-32, is another idiom. 

35. The NED cites this passage under forbear 7 as “to refrain from using, uttering”. 
The sense seems to be ‘‘cannot restrain (overbear) their husbands in speech”. The Harley 
MS reads oon woord, as if “one word’. 

38. per living; an accusative of duration of time; “all their life long”. See 48. 

41. chaumpartye. Latin campt-partem, a divided field; French chawmpart. Chaucer, 
KnTale 1091, used the word in the sense of “partnership in power”. Lydgate, says the NED, 


414 NOTES [PAGE 117 


seems to have misunderstood “holde chaumpartye”’ as “to hold rivalry or contest with, to 
resist”. He was followed by some of the 16th century archdists, says NED. 

71. O noble wyves. Cp. the Clerk’s envoy, passim, for this and various other phrases 
here borrowed by Lydgate. 

85. In existence, in reality. Used definitely in this sense HoFame 266, but here merely 
padding for rime. Cp. 13 above, on the same rime-sound. 

88. bountee, etc. “Or more patient than Griselda, to augment their excellence.” 
Bounty and beauty were two main categories of perfection; see Flower of Courtesy 216-217, 
where the poet says that “bountee and beautie both in her demeyne, She maketh bountee alwey 
souereyne”’. That is, graciousness has with her precedence over physical perfection. See also 
Gower’s ballade 31, in ed. by Macaulay i:363. From its first usage in English, ca. 1300, the 
word bounty has also a narrower sense of “kindness, liberality”; see ResonandSens 6160 ff., 
but see ibid. 6450. Cp. Shakespeare’s song ‘“‘Who Is Sylvia,” in Two Gentlemen of Verona,— 
“Ts she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness”. And cp. BoDuch 1195-8, also 
its direct sources, Machaut’s Roi de Behaingne 461-2, Reméde de Fortune 1671-83. See the 
variant-stanza in one MS of Chaucer’s Troilus, printed in Root’s ed., p. 140. 

91. to breke with my faaste, to break my fast with. For the word-order, see Thebes 
35 and note. 

96. more pane thritty Mayes. The French text (Montaiglon xi:284) says “Des ans y a 
plus de deux cens”; that in Archiv 114:83 reads “Il y a des ans bien deux cens”. Whether 
Lydgate, by altering into this phrase, means that thirty years have elapsed since Chaucer 
wrote his Griselda, is uncertain. 

98. This line gave the scribes some trouble. Harley writes “But yit oon Gresield”, etc.; R 
3, 19 has “But oone lyke Gresild”, etc. If we keep this reading, we must render fonde in 98 
as ‘discover’, in 99 as “found”. 

105 ff. In the Bigorne text printed Archiv 114:80 there is at this point a stanza uttered 
by a wife who sees Bigorne about to lay hold on her husband. Lydgate has a stanza of 
lament by a husband. 

110. an impossible, In English of this period, impossible was frequently a substantive. 
See WB prol. 688 etc., and many cases in Lydgate, e. g., FaPrin. i:6857. 

115. made beyre avowe, sworn. On many formal occasions, when a lord and his cour- 
tiers pledged themselves to some undertaking, their oaths were made upon the body of a bird. 
The Vows of the Swan were taken by Edward I in 1306, when, according to the chronicler 
Matthew of Westminster, two swans appeared before the king as he was knighting his son 
previous to the invasion of Scotland. Cp. especially here the Vows of the Peacock. The 
peacock was in Greek and Roman times regarded as one of the greatest of table delicacies; 
Cicero, writing to Paetus, bids his correspondent marvel at his temerity in entertaining Hir- 
tius (a well-known gourmand) when he has no peacock to set before him. In the Middle 
Ages the peacock was “la viande des preux”; at state banquets it was formally set upon the 
table by the lady of greatest rank or beauty, to the accompaniment of music; and it was 
placed before the most honored guest that he might carve it. It became customary for the 
carver, and in turn the knights present, to pledge themselves to further achievement in the 
names of “God, Our Lady, the ladies, and the peacock”. Les Voeux du Paon, written 
about 1310 by Jacques de Longuyon, describes such a feast, such vows, and their fulfilment; 
see Ward, Cat. of Romances, i1:146. That Lydgate knew the custom, and perhaps knew 
of Longuyon’s epic, appears from his allusions to the “vowes of pecok”’; a stanza in his 
Midsummer Rose, pr. Halliwell, p. 22, contains the lines :— 


Where ben of Fraunce all the dozepiere 

Which in Gaule had the governaunce? 

Vowes of pecok with all ther proude chere? 
The worthy nyne with all ther high bobbaunce? 


See Gaston Paris, La littérature francaise au moyen-age, p. 76; see Koeppel in Archiv 108 :29. 
There is also in French a poem entitled Les Voeux du _Héron, prescribing vows taken 
by Edward III and many of his court in 1338, pledging Englishmen to perform marvels 


PAGE 118] THEBES-PROLOGUE 415 


in their invasion of France; these vows were sworn at the instigation of Robert d’Artois, 
an exiled Frenchman, who served at the King’s banquet a roasted heron with the taunt that 
as it was the most timid of birds it should be an example to the most cowardly of men. 
This poem is printed in La Curne de Ste. Palaye’s Mémoires sur l’ancienne chevalerie, iii. 

In the prologue to the tale of Beryn we find “I make a vowe to the pecock”; and when 
Chaucer’s Sir Thopas, line 151, swears “by ale and breed”, it is probably intended as 
a burlesque of the solemn oaths taken upon the dish of honor, the peacock, 

116. Harley 2251 reads exile for euer pacience. The words for evir have been written on 
the margin of our text, in darker ink, with a caret after eryle. 

117. cryed wolffes hede obedyence. An outlaw, in the fifteenth century, was said to 
carry a wolf’s head on his shoulders, because he was hunted down like a wolf, the terror 
of the English medieval countryside. See Gamelyn 700, 710, 722. Lydgate uses the ex- 
pression in FaPrinces vii:1261, “Cried woluis hed was vertuous sobirnesse’, i. e. “It was 
cried,— Away with virtuous soberness!”’ 

120. The MS R 3, 19 reads fast full longe. 


PROLOGUE TO THE SIEGE OF THEBES 


1 ff. A temporal clause describing the season of the year is a favorite mode of opening 
with medieval writers. Nigel Wireker’s Contra Curiales begins :— 


Postquam tristis hiems Zephyro spirante recessit 
Grando, nives, pluviae, consuluere fugae, 
Terra, parens florum, vires rediviva resumpsit. (Wright, Satir. Po. i) 


The Metamorphosis Goliae of Walter Map begins :— 


Sole post arietem taurum subintrante 
Novo terrae faciem flore picturante. 


The fourth book of Guido delle Colonne’s Historia Trojana, cited by Skeat in his note on 
the opening of Chaucer’s Prologue, begins:—Tempus erat quo sol maturans sub obliquo 
Zodiaci circulo cursum sub signo iam intrauerat Arietis; see my Chaucer Manual, p. 267. 

The combination of mythology with nature-description in a temporal clause opening 
with When became still more common after Chaucer. In Lydgate’s Troy Book it frequently 
serves as an introduction to a new phase of the story, cp. i:3094, 3907, 11:3319, 5070, etc.; 
he uses it also Secrees 1296, Pedigree of Henry VI line 287 ff., etc. The printer Copland’s 
rejection of the method, and some modern acceptances of it, are noted with Cavendish’s 
Metrical Visions, line 1 here. In this poem Lydgate has the date of the Canterbury Pilgrimage 
in mind, and says that the sun has entered the Bull, the next constellation to the Ram which 
Chaucer mentioned in his line 8. 

Observe the sentence-structure of this opening in comparison with that of Chaucer. 
Chaucer’s first eighteen lines assure us of his full command of complex phrasing, his 
clear view of his goal. In line 12, Than longen folk is the prompt and expected conclusion 
of the Whan of lines 1 and 5. But Lydgate’s endeavor to imitate this poise expresses itself 
only in beginnings and rebeginnings, in an accumulation of clauses to their final exhaustion 
in line 78—or 91?—without reaching a principal verb. His habitual use of the ablative ab- 
solute and of the participles as a finite verb, as here, is one of his most baffling ineptitudes ; 
see lines 17, 35, 49, 53, 55, 56. But even were finite verbs substituted, the construction of 
the paragraph as a whole would not be established; this idiosyncrasy of Lydgate’s is an 
additional complication, not a fundamental cause of his incoherence. 

3. Satourn old. Saturn was decribed by Albricus, De Deorum Imaginibus, as “homo 
senex, canus, prolixa barba, curvus, tristis et pallidus, tecto capite, colore glauco.” He is 
so described in Lydgate’s ResonandSens 1347, 3091, 3103; Sackville in his Induction line 3 
borrows this verse from Lydgate. 

8. Shour ... made avale. If Saturn were in Virgo and the moon were in opposition to 
him, she must be in Pisces, a “watery” sign. 


416 NOTES [PAGE 120 


19. Koeppel suggested here “Complet are told”, to obtain a finite verb. See his mono- 
graph as ante p. 120, note on his p. 12. The change would however stabilize only one clause. 

22. Some of desport, etc. These same phrases appear in the description of Chaucer’s 
work FaPrinces i:344; see p. 162 here. 

32. And eek also. This accumulation of emphasis, used by Chaucer, e.g. HoFame 178, 
is frequent in Lydgate. I have noted four other cases in Thebes, four in ResonandSens, 
fifteen in the Troy book. It occurs in the Serpent of Division, p. 55. 

33. Lydgates here credits the Pardoner with the Summoner’s appearance and conduct. 

35. to angre with, to anger. This locution, instead of “to anger the Friar with”, is 
regular in Middle English. Chaucer, Prol. 791, has “To shorte with our weye”’; Gower, 
Confessio i:2172, has “To tendre with the kinges herte’; Piers Plowman (B) vi:297, has 
“And profred Perse this present to plese with hunger’; Lydgate, Bycorne 91, has “to breke 
with my fast’, Dance Macabre 86, “to wrappen in my body”, Troy Book ii:6238, “to glade 
with the eyr”. See also Orléans xx :4, p. 231 here. Hoccleve, Male Régle 150, has the modern 
word-order. 

51. many prouerbe. The Middle Ages set high value upon proverbs, maxims and “sen- 
tences”. The extracts from classical writers which appear and reappear in medieval authors 
are by preference “auctoritees”, scraps of moral or practical wisdom. This lasted long. 
When the second edition of Speght’s Chaucer was issued in 1602, it announced on its 
titlepage, among other improvements, ‘Sentences and proverbs noted”. This noting is done 
by tiny pointing hands along the margins of the text, sometimes only one on a page, sometimes, 
as in the Melibeus, ten or twelve. ,The difference between this and the modern view of 
literature is clearly illustrated by this choice of notes. In Chaucer’s Prologue, where we would 
mark the opening spring symphony, which, as Lowell said, still at the thousandth reading 
lifts the hair upon our foreheads with a breath of uncontaminated springtide; where we 
quote lines of character-description, of the Prioress’ smiling, of the Shipman’s tempest- 
shaken beard,—the medieval reader made a very different selection. The first line of the 
Prologue which is marked in the 1602 edition is 443, “For gold in phisik is a cordial’; three 
lines in the description of the Parson are noted, 500, 503, and 505; and other lines scored 
are 563, 652, 731, 741, and 830. This annotation is not retained in the 1687 Chaucer. 

52. his sugred mouth. The term sugred is extremely common in Lydgate. He talks 
of sugared sounds, sugared eloquence, sweet sugared harmony, the sugared aureat liquor of the 
Muses, the god who sugars the tongues of rhetoricians, etc. Chaucer, translating the phrase 
of Boethius, “melliflui canit oris Homerus”, rendered it “Homer with the honey mouth, that 
is to say, Homer with the swete ditees.” Possibly it was this phrase which suggested 
Lydgate’s “sugred ditees of Omere”, (FaPrinces ix:3402); but the term sugred is rare in 
Chaucer (cp. Troilus ii:384) and Gower does not use the word freely. 

We should note that the Latin mellea, “honeyed”, would naturally give in Middle English 
the term sugared, since the sugar of the Middle Ages, a very expensive luxury obtained 
principally from Venice, was a viscous liquid or thick syrup, not unlike prepared honey. It 
was not until late in the fifteenth century that a Venetian discovered the art of refining and 
hardening the product. Such phrases as those of Ausonius in his Epistles, “quam mellea res 
sit oratio”, or “melleum eloquium’’, could lead direct to ‘“‘sugared eloquence”. 

The word was used by other than Lydgate; cp. Test. of Love i:4, Court of Love 22, 
Bokenam’s St. Anne 57-59, Skelton’s Garland of Laurell 73-4, etc. 

55-56. These phrases, and a line from Chaucer’s Prologue, are echoed in Caxton’s pro- 
heme to his second edition of the Canterbury Tales; see Fliigel’s Neuengl. Lesebuch, p. 6. 
Caxton there says of Chaucer that “he comprehended hys matere in short / quyck / and hye 
sentences / eschewynge / prolyxyte / castyng away the chaf of superfluyte / and shewyng 
the pyked grayn of sentence / utteryd by crafty and sugred eloquence”. 

58. ded mete. This use of the verb do as an auxiliary, rare in earlier English, and 
appearing in Chaucer only in interrogative construction (Monk’s Tale 442, 444), is very com- 
mon in Lydgate. In fact, the weakening of do into such usage is a feature of fifteenth- 
century grammar. See Hittmair, Das Zeitwort ‘do’ in Chaucer’s Prosa, 1923, pp. 85 ff. The 
Kentish form ded may be noted. 


PAGE 121] THEBES-PROLOGUE 417 


65. See line 136; and cp. St. Albon i:130, “None so hardy to be therto contrarye”. 

68-9. Hap or fortune. Cp. Chaucer’s Prologue 846, “Were it by aventure, or sort, or 
cas”; and from the many similar cases in Lydgate’s Troy Book take iii:2815, “Were it be 
hap auenture or caas”’. Note also Dante, Inferno xxxii:76, “Se voler fu, o destino, o for- 
tuna”. 

72. vowes to aquyte. The sick who called upon a saint to heal them were bound when 
recovered to pay their thanks at his shrine; cp. Chaucer’s Prol. 17-18. Cp, also Bokenam’s 
prol. to St. Magdalen 112-13, “My pylgrymage . . . wych promysyd I to saynt Jamys wyth 
hert entere Had to performe be same yere.” 

73. of black and not of grene. ‘Black was the color of the ascetic, of mourning, of the 
Benedictine monk; green that of youth, vigor, joyousness. See Barclay, Ecl. prol. 107; see 
Deschamps’ balade, Oeuvres iii:224, “Aingoix pour vert me vueil de noir vestir”. 

75. The adornment of a horse’s trappings, especially the bridle, with bosses and bells of 
silver, was a frequent medieval mode of display; cp. Skeat’s note on CantTales prol. 170. 

_ Lydgates’s bridle, as described here and 85 below, indicated poverty. 

76. My man toforn, etc. Cp. Chaucer, CanYeo headlink 13-14. 

90. a wonder thred bar hood. See Shirley’s allusions to Lydgate’s poverty, in the poem 
printed p. 196 here, lines 37-44. 

93. ny3 fyfty 3ere of age. Koeppel, in his diss. on this poem above mentioned, pp. 11 
ff., argues the date of the Siege of Thebes from this passage. 

95. As I haue hight. It is not clear whether this means “According to my promise”, or 
“As for my name”. 

96. wel broke ye youre name, “well profit you your name!” Cp. Chaucer’s Legend, prol. 
(B) 194; cp. Beryn 66, “broke wel thy name”, King Horn 206, “wel bruke pu pi nevening”. 

100. hagys. A sort of meat-loaf, cooked like a large sausage in the maw of the animal; 
see a verse-recipe printed Anglia 36:372, and one printed in the EETS volume of cookery- 
books, p. 39. The dish is still made in Scotland; see Burns, To a Haggis. Wiilker, in his 
text as above, was led by his use of Stow’s poor copy to render this word as bagys, bags. 
See also note on 162 below. 

101. A ffranchmole a tansey or a froyse. Verse-recipes for these dishes are printed 
Anglia 36:373 and in the EETS vol. above mentioned, pp. 39, 45, 86. A franche mole was 
not unlike a haggis; a tansey and a froyse were pancakes. Gower, Confessio iv :2732, says 
of Somnolence that he “brustleth as a monkes froise Whanne it is throwe into the panne.” 
The froise or pancake made with fish was an especially common dish with monks because 
of their many fast-days. ; 

102. sclender is youre koyse. The word koyse, coise is very rare in Mid. Engl. and Old 
French. Gower, Confessio i:1734, calls the hideous old wife whom Florent is forced to wed 
“this foule grete coise”; Godefroy, in his dictionary of Old French, cites the fifteenth play 
of St. Nicholas for the word, and queries its meaning. There also occurs, see Hartshorne’s 
Ancient Metrical Tales, p. 118, the phrase “coisy fish”, meaning apparently coarse or worth- 
less fish. 

110. The bracketed word is not in the MS. 

117-18. These herbs are remedies for flatulence or colic, the collis passioun of line 114. 

124. parcel afore pryme, a little before dawn. Prime, the first period of the day, was 
originally reckoned from six a. M., then from sunrise. The use of parcel with a phrase, as 
here, is exemplified by NED from Lydgate only. 

126. by kokkis blood, by God’s blood. For this corrupted form cp. Chaucer, Mancprol. 
line 9, Parson’s prol. 29; London Lickpenny 93. 

142. platly. This word, like pleinly, sothly is much used by Lydgate for mid-line padding. 
Cp. in the Troy Book iv lines 79, 93, 139, 425, 447, 615, 618, 665, 681, etc. 

155. Ospryng. This town was about ten miles on the London side of Canterbury. 

160. be Zour Cristene name. This tag not only served to fill out a line, but gave the 
identification which the medieval mind so desired. Cp. Nun’s Priest’s prol. 42, “or dan Piers 
by your name”; DoctTale 213, “Virginia by thy name”; Gower’s Confessio i:1541, “And 


418 NOTES [PAGE 123 


seide Florent be thi name”. Cp. Bokenam, St. Magd. prol. 75; cp. Barclay, Eclogue i, prol. 
19, “Himselfe he called Cornix by his name”. Skelton’s usage of the phrase in Garl. 381 
is not a tag; see note tbid. 

162. portoos, a breviary, Old French portehors. See Chaucer, Shipman’s Tale 131, “For 
on my porthors here I make an ooth”. The porthors was often of great beauty and value; 
Henry the Fourth bequeathed his to his son Henry the Fifth, who left it to Bishop Beaufort, 
cp. Wylie’s Henry the Fourth iii:233. John of Gaunt also bequeathed to Beaufort, then 
Bishop of Lincoln, “mon messale et mon portheus”, see Armitage-Smith’s life of Gaunt, p. 
428. In catalogues of medieval libraries we frequently find the “porthors” very richly exe- 
cuted. Wiilker, following Stow’s text, printed portes here, and interpreted it as “gates” or 
“lips”. See note on line 100 above.—a twenty deuelway, i.e., in the name of twenty devils. 
See Chaucer, MillTale 527, Reves Tale 337; Chester Play of Noah’s Flood 219, etc. 

165. a lape, no Jape. The MSS vary in the word appearing before Jape; Arundel omits. 
The word jape, “jest”, is used by the Host when ordering the Pardoner to narrate, Pard. 
headlink 33, ‘““Tel us som mirth or japes right anon”. 

166. rouncy. This may be an error by Lydgate, as Chaucer assigns a rouncy, or common 
cart-horse, to the Shipman. 

167. Cp. the Clerk’s headlink, “But precheth nat, as freres doon in Lente”. 

169. bekke, beak, nose. The earliest example of this word given NED is of 1598. Cp. 
Troy Book ii:5781, “And noddeth ofte with his Ilowsy hed”. See MancTale 346. 

170. draweth to effekke, “amounts to something, has weight”. The word effecte has in this 
MS been altered to effekke; both forms appear in the MSS of the poem. 


THE DANCE MACABRE 


The poem is headed in Brit. Mus. Harley 116 “The Daunce of Macabre”. Bodl. Laud 
735 and this MS have only “Verba translatoris”; Bodley 221 has no heading. 

Of the B-recension MSS, Bodley 686 heads the poem “Here begynnep a tretys of the 
daunce of Poulys other weyes called Makabre;” Corpus writes “The Daunce of Powlys’’; 
Lansdowne and Lincoln Cathedral have as heading “Incipit macrobius’’. 

The five opening stanzas here are not in the B-recension. 

6. pat be refers to folkes in line 1. 

20. depict... in a wal. Cp. Horse Goose and Sheep 18, Utter Thy Language (Min 
Rowl73) e976 

24. Machabres daunce. The earliest known use of this phrase is in the Respit de Mort 
of Jehan le Févre, ca. 1376. He there says :— 


Je fis de macabre la dance, 

Qui toutes gens maisne a sa tresche 
Et a la fosse les adresche 

Qui est leur derraine maison. 


The passage is printed by Gaston Paris, Romania 24:130. Apparently the next recorded use 
of the phrase is in the Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris sous Charles VII, printed by Labarre 
in his Mémoires pour servir a l’histoire de France, 1729, and by Tuetey in 1881 for the Soc. 
de l’histoire de Paris, etc. The diarist says that a preacher speaking in the cloisters of SS. 
Innocents was “a l’endroit de la danse macabre”; and some pages earlier he states that the 
Dance was begun about August 1424 and finished by the following Lent. In a description of 
Paris compiled by Guil. de Metz about 1434, the fresco is mentioned as the Dance Macabre; 
in a poem written by Jehan Regnier after his imprisonment in 1432, he says “Si fault- 
il aller a la dance De macabre la trés-diverse’; the French MSS use that heading, as 
do the many prints. Lydgate adopted the phrase, and incorporated it in his text; a few 
usages of it in later English are mentioned in the Introduction ante, but the B-recension, 
which is without Lydgate’s prologue of explanation, does not preserve the French name. 
The word macabre is still a difficulty to philologists. It has been explained as from the 
Arabic maq-abir, a place of sepulture; see Seelmann, p. 24 and his reference to Van Praet, 


PAGE 131] THE DANCE MACABRE 419 


author of the suggestion. This etymology is refused by Male, who in his work on French 
medieval religious art, p. 390 note, says that the only possible derivation is by popular modi- 
fication of the name of the Maccabees, the Jewish warrior-heroes. He points to the Latin 
heading “Macchabaeorum chorea”, the Dutch term “Makkabeus danz”, (see Romania 24 :588). 
The NED adopts this explanation; but no connection has yet been shown with any church 
or festivity sacred to the Maccabees. Another etymology is from Macarius, the name of a 
hermit-saint who may then be the hermit appearing in the Campo Santo fresco at Pisa and in 
some of the poems. Yet another, advocated by Gaston Paris as above, treats Macabre as 
the surname of the earliest painter of the Death-picture; and that the word was indeed a 
surname in medieval France is easily proved; see my paper MLNotes 24:63 for example. For 
a résumé of the discussion see Huet, Notes d’historie littéraire, iii, Paris, 1918. See Male as 
cited for treatment of the Dance as a dramatic performance. 

The word dance has here its frequent medieval sense of a procession, a chain or file formed 
in dancing; such a dance had generally a leader, as in the Flower and Leaf. The phrase 
olde daunce meant “experience”. 

25. atte be leste. The medieval scribe frequently contracted at be into atte; he has here 
written both the contracted and the full form. 

26. her sterying, their suggestion and urging. See MaReg 192, Thebes 235. 

27. Lydgate here says that he executed his translation at the suggestion of French 
clerks. Warton-Hazlitt iii:55 has corrected Warton’s earlier assertion that the monk worked 
at the request of the Chapter of St. Paul’s,—a statement retained by the DNB. The DNB 
also says that this poem is of 24 quatrains, and mentions MS Lansdowne 699. 

31. mirrour. See note FaPrinces G 179 for another usage of this metaphor; here the 
meaning is “example”. 

41 ff. This first stanza from the French illustrates Lydgate’s adherence to the rime- 
sounds of his original. 

46. The B-recension alters to “daunce which that ye see”. Note the excision of the 
word makabre. 

60. The B-recension alters to “chirche most in especiall”. 

64. to god is the honour. It might seem that Lydgate here mistranslated the French 
“Aux grans maistres est deu honneur’”; but at least one French MS, Bibl. nat. fonds latin 
14904, writes “est dieu lonneur”. 

68. The B-recension has seynt before Petris. 

71. ffor such honour, etc. is the reading of the Lincoln Cathedral MS. 

75. appil round. The orb or sphere was, with the sceptre and sword, an imperial attri- 
bute. This is not the appil round of line 288. 

83. geim. Harley 116 reads bote, Ellesmere geyne, the B-recension gyn. 

86. To wrappe in my body. See note on Thebes 35 here. 

87. Harley 116 reads “And bervppon I may me sore complayne’”; Bodley and Corpus 
“full sore I may compleyne”’; Ellesmere agrees with Selden. 

101. grys ne ermyn. ‘These valuable furs might be worn by high ecclesiastics. See 
line 250. 

103. lyved wel. Ellesmere reads as Selden; Harley 116, conceyued well; B-type MSS, 
lerned wel, 

107. This phrase, Com forth, is addressed to the Lady of Great Estate 185, to the Squire 
line 217, to the Abbot line 233, to the Bailiff line 265, to the Astronomer line 281, to the 
Sergeant line 361, and to the Gentlewoman line 449. See note on 153, 

109, Ellesmere and Selden both omit for. Harley 116 reads “for all your highnesse”. 

117. See line 308. 

120. he shal al, etc. So Ellesmere. Harley 116 and the B-type MSS have we shul all, etc. 

136. Note the use of do as an auxiliary, and cp. lines 287, 507, 619. See notes on Dial. 
613, Thebes 58. 

137 ff. The address of Death to the Constable is rewritten in the B-recension, the 
character summoned being termed the Prince. It runs, in Bodley 686 :— 


420 NOTES [PAGE 133 


Right myghti prince beth ryght wel certeyn 
This daunce to you is not eschewable 

ffor more mighty ban euer was Charlemayn 
Or worthi Artour of prowes ful notable 
With al his knyghtes of be rounde table 
What myght per platis ther Armes or maile 
Ther stronge curage ther scheldes defensable 
To deth avayle when he doth hem assaile 


Note the retention of A-type rime-sounds. 

141-2. There is no verb for these subjects. See line 433. 

153. whi. ..withdrawe. Cp. what do ye .. .tarie in line 297, or Com forth as in 107 
etc., for the dramatic quality of the text. 

174. This line reads in the B-version “Was in estate and worldely worschip to glade”. 

179. my thanke also deuised, “acknowledgment also rendered to me”. 

185-200. These Princess-stanzas are not in the French or in the B-recension. 

195. Selden omits pronoun; Ellesmere reads moste y nedes fote; Harley and Trin, have J. 

198. trace sewe, follow the steps. To follow or “sewe” the traces of Homer or of 
old authors, to dance the trace of lovers, etc., are phrases frequent in the fifteenth century 
and earlier. See prol. to Chaucer’s Legend 285, his Gentilesse 3; see the play of Mankind, 
where the minstrels are bid to play “the common trace”, and where Titivillus says of the 
leading character, “I shall make him to dance another trace”. 

199-200. oure. Selden, Bodley 221, Laud, read Joure. 

205. dredly. Most MSS dredeful. 

207. broughte to lure. A metaphor from hawking. The falcon which had flown at its 
prey was reclaimed or recalled to the wrist of the master by calls and by the display of a 
lure, i. e. a bit of leather furnished with feathers to resemble a small bird. The metaphor 
is so common in MidEng as to be proverbial; see the WBprol 415 and cp. RevesTale 214, also 
two occurrences at least of the same proverb in Lydgate, in the fable of the Wolf and the 
Lamb and in Utter thy Language. In’a still older form it is used by John of Salisbury, 
Polycraticus v, cap. 10, “uacuae manus temeraria petitio est’. The metaphor occurs in Lyd- 
gate’s Letter to Gloucester 37 (see p. 150 here) and it continues to modern times, as in Swin- 
burne’s “Time stoops to no man’s lure’. 

210. Harley 116 has. ..ye me bringe. 

211. a symple ferye, an ordinary holiday or feria, a weekday on which work was sus- 
pended, but not a feast-day. 

212. me list no ping syng, I am not at all disposed to sing. 

213. The omission of the principal verb, here 7s, is common in Lydgate. 

215. bat is not in Trin. or Corpus. 

220. at youre vnkoupe dewise, to your special desire. See prol. to Thebes 99. 

225-232. The rimes in this stanza have a monotony not seen in the French. 

230. euery day is prime, every day is a beginning. See note on Thebes 124. For this 
more general use of prime cp. Lydgate’s FaPrinces i:738, “Off chaung it was to hem a 
newe pryme”. 

235. heed in Harley, Trinity; Ellesmere hede; hood in Selden, Laud, Bodl. 221. 

241. envie. From the context there seems a confusion in Lydgate’s mind between the 
Old French envie, “wish, desire”, and enuie “disgust, repulsion, annoyance’. The original 
“De cecy neusse point enuie”, means “For this (summons) I have no desire’; but Lydgate 
seems to institute a contrast between the loss of power and the death as a cloisterer. 

249-64. The Abbess-stanzas are not in the French. The B-recension alters them. 

250. mantels furred. The use of fur was very general in medieval England. Poor 
men wore sheepskin for warmth; the rich and those of high rank used ermine, vair and gris. 
Chaucer’s Monk, the Cardinal of this poem (line 101), Mercury as Doctor of Physic in 
Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid 251, all wear rich fur. Such display by Churchmen, as also 
the secular cut of their robes, was censured by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1342. 


PAGE 135] THE DANCE MACABRE 421 


251. passing of greet, of passing great. 
257 ff. The reply of the Abbess is rewritten in the B-recension, and deprived of force 
or color. 
Alas that deth hath so for me ordeyned 
That in no wise I kan him not eschewe 
Vnto this daunce of ryght I am constreyned 
That here with other y moste his trace sewe 
This pilgrimage to euery man is dewe 
A ernest matere a matere of no Jape 
Who that is redy schal neuer rewe 
The hour abydyng god hath for him schape (MS Bodley 686) 


261. chekes...vernysshed. The Abbess painted her face. See in FaPrinces i:6525 
ff., with mention of “farcing and popping” 6563, the long catalogue of women’s arts in dis- 
guising figure, hair, and complexion; this list is much expanded from Boccaccio by Laurent, 
Lydgate’s French original. See also the Troy Book ii:2685-99. As at this time all worldly 
license was imitated by the Church, regardless of archiepiscopal censure, we may suppose 
that Lydgate is here speaking by the book. The nuns who entertained Rozmital and his 
Bohemians at Neuss in 1465 were “acquainted with the most excellent dances.” See Mrs. 
Cust’s Gentlemen Errant, p. 16, and her references. 

262. Vngirt...at the large. “At large’ means at liberty; cp. HoFame 745, WBprol 
322, etc. To walk ungirt is probably a reflection on the nun’s chastity. In Nigel Wireker’s 
12th century Speculum Stultorum (ed. Wright, Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets, i:94) one of 
the censures of nuns is “Cingula nulla ferunt”. And on p. 96, ibid., the speaker Brunellus an- 
nounces that in his new and easygoing Abbey, where there are to be the prancing horses 
of the Templars, the rich food of the Cluniacs, etc., he will adopt from nuns their custom 
“zonam semper abesse meam”. The girdle as a symbol of chastity plays an important part 
in canto v of the Faerie Queene. 

265 ff: After the Abbess the B-recension has instead of the Bailly the Justice. A 
citation will show the difference of this addition from the movement of Lydgate. 


Thik honde of your my lorde Justice 

That hath rewled so longe in lawe 

Wel may men holde you ware and wise 

So that this drawght be wel ydrawe 

Escape schal not ye wolde ye neuer so fawe 

Suche dome to haue / as ye haue yeue in soth 

Therfor men seyn of an old sawe 

Wel is him alwey that wel doth (MS Bodley 686) 


The conception of the Bailly here is that of the officer of justice under a county sheriff, 
who made arrests, as in Piers Plowman B ii:59, and not as in Chaucer’s Prologue, the agent 
of a manorial lord. In either capacity he was a well-hated personage, his position affording 
him every opportunity for extortion. —knowen, cp. loken in line 281. 

270-72. Observe the like rime, verb and substantive. 

275. chaunge. Read chaunce, i.e., fortune. 

276. what me list to spede, to promote whatever pleased me. 

282. Instrumentis of Astronomy. By this is not meant the telescope, which was un- 
known before 1600 except to a few individuals who did not realize its practical importance, and 
who used it mainly in “natural magic” (Encyl. Brit.). Lydgate is probably alluding to armil- 
lary spheres, which were known already to Hipparchus and Ptolemy; or he may have in mind 
the astrolabe and cross-staff, which were used in taking altitudes; cp. line 283. Columbus 
and Vasco da Gama had these and the compass; the sextant was unknown until the 18th 
century. 

292. domefiyng. The location of the planets in their respective “houses” of the Zodiac, 
preparatory to casting a horoscope. There is no corresponding word in the French, and 
this is the first citation of the word by the NED. See FaPrinces i:299, p. 161 here. 


422 NOTES [PAGE 136 


297. what. The line should perhaps be punctuated with an exclamation-point after 
this word, which would then be an introductory ejaculation, as in Chaucer’s Prologue 854. 
The meaning why would suit well with the context, but I find no cases of such use. 

298. aver, possessions; in the French, line 226, avoir. Harley, Trinity, and the B-recen- 
sion change to honeur, onneur. 

306. and may it not assure. Here may is the infinitive, as in Caxton, Foure Sonnes of 
Aymon, “As longe that I shalle may bere armes”. The meaning is “To leave all this and be 
unable to assure it, be certain of it”. Cp. the use of mowe in Troy Book i:4016, “schal nat 
mowe sustene”; see also ibid. i:1134, ii:4210, iv:1063, 6497; see Hoccleve’s Male Régle 148, 
and mow in Chaucer’s Boethius v prose 4:163, Gower’s Confessio ii :1670. 

308. See line 117. 

311. recure, recover, take back. This variant form of the verb recover is exceedingly 
common, even characteristic, in Lydgate. It occurs about a hundred times in the FaPrinces 
and nearly as often in the Troy Book, largely as a rime-word. The parallel form discure is not 
so common, and both are only occasional in Lydgate’s contemporaries; they are not in 
Gower’s Confessio, and Chaucer has apparently but one case, discure, BoDuchesse 549. The 
use of recure by Spenser should be noted. 

When translating here, Lydgate retained the French rime-words nature and creature, re- 
jecting norriture and droiture; the -ure words which he substituted, assure and recure, led 
him into difficulties. He seems to have read the French (stanza 30) with a full stop after 
demeurent, taking it to mean “do not endure’, and to have treated monde as a nominative. 

313. prebende. An ecclesiastical living; the portion of the revenues of a cathedral or 
collegiate church granted to a canon or member of the chapter as his stipend. (NED) See 
line 596. 

313 ff. The Canon-stanzas are somewhat altered in the B-recension, but the A-rimes are 
kept. 

339. do carie, etc. “I have caused many a bale to be carried”. This old active use of 
do, so regular in Chaucer, is rare in Lydgate. See note on line 136. 

344. Cp. the line “Who al embraceth litel shall restraine”, in the Proverbs attributed 
to Chaucer. See Hoccleve’s Male Régle 353-55; see the French Dance, line 272. 

350. memoire. The OFr avoir memoire en meant penser a, acc. to Godefroy, There is no 
en in the French here, stanza 35, but the meaning seems to be “have no mind to longer life.” 
Lydgate’s use of memorie to translate the word is peculiar. 

356. by kindly mocioun, by natural impulse. 

368. MSS Bodley 221, Laud 735, Trinity, and Ellesmere agree with Selden. Harley 
has deth is a strong; Corpus 237, and the B-group, read “Thowghe he be myghty dethe is 
yit mor stronge”. 

374. pou3 I hadde it sworn, though I had vowed against it. Common in Chaucer, see 
Troilus iv:976, KnTale 1666, etc. 

377 ff. In this stanza Lydgate departs from the French (st. 39) in all but the last two 
lines. 

392. This proverbial expression is differently twisted in PoFoules 592. 

393 ff. The Usurer is not in the B-recension, and the removal of this very typical figure 
is an interesting point of difference between the two texts. The term “usury” was in the 
Middle Ages applied to all lending of money upon interest. The practice had been severely 
condemned by the ancient Jews (Exod. 22:25, etc), and by the Greek and Roman law-codes. 
For a man did not borrow, as frequently today, to push his undertaking or meet a temporary 
need, but when in a state of extreme distress. Unable to repay, he was often obliged to 
surrender his personal liberty; see Nehemiah 5:5. In both Greece and Rome a large part of 
the population, originally small proprietors, had become practically enslaved; and the failure 
of national feeling because of this must have contributed to the fall of the Empire. The 
Christian Fathers condemned “usury” in the strongest terms; even before the Council of 
Nicaea (325) we find legislation against it as practised by clerics, and the Church’s penalties 
for it were by later councils extended to laymen also. The Council of Vienne, in 1311, 


PAGE 137] THE DANCE MACABRE 423 


declared it heresy to defend the legality of usury. In the fifteenth century, however, the 
whole character of borrowing changed with the development of the trading class, and in spite 
of the bull of Sixtus V (Detestabilis Avaritiae) in 1586, the Church was obliged to modify 
her position. See Cunningham’s Christian Opinion on Usury, 1884; see art. in Dict. of 
Religion and Ethics. 

The effect of this Church doctrine was to throw most medieval moneylending into 
the hands of the Jews, which increased the popular abhorrence of them. See Confessio 
Amantis vii:3239 ff., Piers’ Plowman B xviii:104, Chaucer’s Prioress’ Tale 39 ff.; see such 
English statutes as that of 5th Henry IV against the “horrible & dampnable peeche de 
Usure” which is practised “tres sotilment” by “gentz estraunges’. See the many examples in 
the Elizabethan drama. 

401. In the French, stanza 42, one line begins “Je vais mourir”’; cp. the Vado Mori dis- 
cussed in introd. above, and such French poems as the Mirouer du Monde, in which each 
stanza begins with that phrase. 

407. by kinde or fatal chaunce, “by nature or by accident of fate’. 

409 ff. Stanza 52 is not in the French, in the B-type, or in Harley 116. 

417. on 3oure vryne. The ancient medical theory of the four bodily “humors”, and of 
the “complexions” which resulted from the dominance of any one of them, regarded dis- 
ease as the excess of one of the humors. Traces of this excess would be found in the bodily 
excretions; the testing of the urine in particular was raised into an elaborate pseudo-science. 
Each of the senses of the examining physician was called into play in the tests; see the picture 
of a doctor in his robes holding a glass vessel to the light, reprod. from a 1490 copy of the 
works of Galen, in Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin, Leipzig, 1907, plate i of vol. i. In 
Hoccleve’s tale of Jonathas the physician comes to the sick woman, “sy hire vryne & eeke 
felte hir pous’. In Hawes’ Pastime lines 1645-7 we have “‘A physycien truely can lyttel 
descerne Ony maner sekenes wythout syght of vryne.’’ The notion persisted long; see 
second Henry IV, act I sc. 2, or Twelfth Night III sc. 4, etc. 

427. speculatyf and . . . practyk. Medicine in its medieval state was linked with 
both astrology and alchemy or pseudo-chemistry. It determined theoretically the proper times 
for preparing and administering its practical remedies, and a long struggle was required 
to substitute for this “magic natural” the knowledge gained by direct experiments. Chaucer’s 
Physician, Prol. 411 ff., was grounded in astronomy; he knew how and when to make the 
“image” of his patient and how to treat that image so as to help the sufferer. 

Barclay, Ship of Fools, ed. Jamieson i:261, speaks of foolish physicians who neglect the 
speculation which is the chief thing in medicine. Jonson in Volpone, II, sc. 1, alludes to 
“the theorick and practick in the Aesculapian art”. See note on Walton A 332 here. 

429. A3ens pestilence. The French, stanza 45, speaks only of “maladie” in general. 
The outbreak of the plague in London in 1426, the date suggested for this translation, may 
be noted. 

433. There is no verb for Je. Cp. lines 141-2. 

433-48. These stanzas are not in the B-recension. 

434. grene age. The color green connoted youth and vigor, as in the leaf; in a bad 
sense, as of the transitoriness of the leaf, it connoted inconstancy. See the poem Against 
Women Unconstant, printed by Skeat with Chaucer’s works, i:409. 

446. wel besein, well beseen, i.e. arrayed or equipped. Used by Chaucer and Gower, 
very frequent in Lydgate,—see TemGlass 1167 and Schick’s note there. In the Assembly of 
Gods 275-6 Juno appears “ful rychely beseene” in a surcoat as bright as glass; the Flower 
and the Leaf, the Garland of Laurell, the Palice of Honour, Orléans as translated here xvi:12, 
Spenser, etc., all use the word. 

448. A proverb in more than one language. Caxton’s Recuyell, ed. Sommer ii:461, has 
“lyke as a small rayne abayteth or lyth doun a grete wynde”’. In Monaci’s chrestomathy of 
Italian, p. 219, Guido delle Colonne is cited—“E pogo piagio grande vento attera.” 

449-464. These stanzas are not in the French; they are retained in the B-recension. 

451. The beloved of Achilles, the faithful wife of Ulysses, the faithless but lovely wife 
of Menelaus stolen by Paris, constantly appear in Lydgate’s lists of noble dames; see his 
Epithalamium 71, and note there for other refs. 


424 NOTES [pace 138 


455. daunger . . . lad Joure reine, “though disdain has hitherto guided you’. The 
word danger meant in Mid. Eng. “power” (Chaucer’s Prol. 663), “difficulty”’ (WBprol 521), 
“haughtiness” (Anelida 186). For the metaphor, derived from the leading of the horses 
of dignitaries on state occasions, see Epithalamium 88. 

456. arestid . . . doubilnesse, ie. “Your fickle shiftings are forced to cease”. 
Doubleness was the most frequent of medieval flings at women. See the poem so entitled in 
Skeat vii:291; see Anelida 159; see Troy Book i:1850, 2094, etc. 

459. yseide chekmate, “said checkmate”. The French phrase eschec mat, “the king is 
dead”, from the Arabic shak mat, signifies to chess-players that the game is over. To “say 
checkmate” to any one was accordingly to defeat, to undo him. The metaphor is exceedingly 
common in Middle English; see note on FaPrinces D 52. 

468. to do folke refuge, “For money you have undertaken to give people protection.” 

481 ff. The Juror is not in the French; the character is retained by the B-recension. 
The medieval juror’s functions were wider than in our day. Under Richard I the assess- 
ment of taxes was entrusted to juries acting under knights of the shire; and as this duty 
implied the valuation of land and property, the opportunity for unscrupulousness was great. 
The juror was hated equally with the summoner, and second only to the usurer. It is how- 
ever not always clear whether the word is employed in its legal sense or in the general 
sense of one who swears, i.e. swears falsely. In Lydgate’s fable of the Hound and Sheep 
the “jurors” inveighed against are the false witnesses who take oath to a lie; but in his de- 
scription of the golden world, FaPrinces vii:1183, the line “Fraude, fals meede put bakward 
fro iorours”, the reference is probably to the legal juror, as is clearly the case here. See note 
below. 

482. questes doste embrace. “Shire questes”’ were judicial inquiries; to embrace, in 
law-language, was to give bribes, especially to a jury or inquest; see NED. Cp. the Towneley 
Mysteries 22:24, where Pilate declares that “all fals endytars, quest-gangars, and Iurors” 
are welcome to him; cp. the acts of Henry VII against “unlawful mayntenours, ymbrasours, 
and Jurrours”. 

490. The belle wedir, the bellwether. In Troilus i11:198 we have “which of yow shall 
bere the bell To speke of love aright’, which is first citation in NED, sense 7, for “take 
first rank, be the best”. This word is contemptuous; this is the earliest citation NED. 

495. write. Note the use of write in this supposedly spoken text. Cp. Chaucer’s SecNun’s 
Tale 78. 

497 ff. The two stanzas of the Minstrel are rewritten in the B-recension. The text of 
Lansdowne 699 (Bodley 686 has not this character) runs :— 


Gentil menstral / shewe now thi witt 

How thou canst pleye / or foote ariht this daunce 
I dar weel sei / that an harder fitt 

Than this / fil neuyr to thi chaunce 

Look ther fore / what may best avaunce 

Thi sowle as now / & vse that I reede 

Refuse nyce play / & veyn plesaunce 

Bettir late / than neuyr to do good deede 


Ey benedicite / this world is freele 

Now glad / now sorry / what shal men vse 
Harpe lute phidil / pipe farewell 

Sautry Sithol / & Shalmuse 

Al wordly myrthe / I here refuse 

God graunte me grace / of sich penaunce 

As may myn old / synnes excuse 

For alle be nat mery / that othir whyle daunce 


509-10. The syntax here is awkward, as often in Lydgate. 
512. Cp. line 392 above, and note. 


ani 


PAGE 139] THE DANCE MACABRE 425 


513 ff. The Tregetour, or Juggler, is not in the French, nor in the B-recension, nor in 
the Trinity MS of the A-recension. It appears from Lydgate’s words that John Rikil or 
Rickhill, the juggler of Henry the Fifth, outlived his royal master, but had just died at the 
time this translation was made. I have not found his name among those of Henry’s min- 
strels and fools, see Rymer’s Foedera ix:255, 260, 336, x:287; but there is a John Michel 
in the list of 1415, who is not mentioned with the royal minstrels to whom money is granted 
by Henry VI in 1423 as having been in his father’s service. 

For the arts of tregetours see Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale and the notes of Tyrwhitt and 
of Skeat on its line 413; see also HoFame 1260, 1277, and Skeat’s note; see Squire’s Tale 
210-11. It will be observed that in this list the Tregetour precedes the Parson; but this is 
possibly because a definite individual formerly of the royal household, is named; for the 
German law-code of the 13-14 centuries placed the bastard children of monks below the 
peasant, “superior only to the juggler’. See Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, p. 336. 

For the introduction of a known and named contemporary into this list of types cp. 
the Fuckardus-or member of the wealthy mercantile family of the Fuggers, who appears, 
after the Mercator, in the Latin death-dance printed at Antwerp in 1533; see the reprint 
by Douce in his Dance of Death, ed. 1902, p. 19. Cp. also a poem by Cornelius Arnold, 1775, 
entitled The Mirror, in which a number of personages are seized by Death, among them 
David Garrick. There is in this poem no dialogue-method or class-arrangement; the person- 
ages are a Knight, the Lord Mayor “Sir Thrifty Gripe”, one “Sir Epicure”, a beauteous 
dame, a beau, a fawning reverend, “Sir Politick’, an actor, a physician, Robustus, a roaring 
blade, Prudella, a lawyer, a lustful old man, a group of fiddlers, dancers, jockeys, poetasters, 
etc. The beggar who sues to Death is refused. The actor is Garrick, who although not 
named is fully described and his most famous triumphs enumerated; the poem is dedicated 
to him. It is of 44 Spenserian stanzas. 

523. cours of sterres. It appears from the FranklTale 545 ff. that the tregetour, like 
the physician, calculated the position and motion of the heavenly bodies as a preliminary io 
the exercise of his art, which must select the auspicious moment. See note on line 427 above. 

529 ff. The character of the Parson or Curate is not in the B-recension. He bears 
no resemblance to Chaucer’s Parson; cp. lines 530-32 with Prologue 486. 

532. Again in 541 Lydgate distinguishes between tithes, or assessed tenths of the parish 
property, due the Church, and the offerings or oblations voluntarily made. Cp. Chaucer’s 
Wife of Bath and her insistence on going up first to the altar to make offering, Prol. 450; 
also his Parson, ibid., 486, 489. 

561. Cordeler. This name was given in France to the Franciscan Observantists, a 
reform-movement of the Franciscans which began at Foligno about 1390 and spread north- 
ward. In 1415 the Council of Constance allowed them a vicar of their own, and by the 
end of the Middle Ages they had some 1400 houses. They carried on the vow of poverty 
so characteristic of the Order, but they attached more value to study than did the earlier 
Franciscans, and were noted for the denunciatory vigor of their sermons, as Lydgate here 
says,—amplifying the French. 

589. With this line and speech cp. Spenser’s ShepCal, January, 29-30; cp. also the poem 
said to have been written by Chidiock Titchbourne in 1586, the night before his execution 
for complicity in the Babington plot. I cite from MS Harley 36. 


My prime of youth is but a frost of cares 
My feast of ioye is but a dishe of paine 

My croppe of corne is but (a) field of tares 
And all my goodes is but vaine hope of gaine 
The daye is fled, and yet I sawe no sonne 
And nowe I live, and nowe my life is donne 


My springe is past, and yet it hath not sprunge 
The fruite is deade, and yet the leaves are green 
My youth is paste, and yet I ame but yonge 


426 NOTES [PAGE 141 


I sawe the worlde, and yet I was not seene 
My thrid is cutt, and yet it is not sponn 
And now I live, and nowe my life is donne 


I sought for death, and found it in the wombe 
I lookt for life, and yet it was a shade 

I trade the grounde, and knewe it was my tombe 
And nowe I dye, and nowe I am but made 

The glasse is full, and yet my glasse is ronne 

And now I live, and nowe my life is donne 


593 ff. The character of the Clerk is not in the B-recension. 

602. ffro my seruice. So the Ellesmere MS, etc. Read for my seruice? 

606. To late ware, i.e., “It is too late to beware.” 

621-3. Lydgate uses participles instead of finite verbs. 

623-4. The second halves of these lines are altered in the B-recension to read respec- 
tively “such as I have assayed” and “but he that halt him payed”. Possibly the notion of 
“great habondance” offended the reviser when connected with hermit-life. 

625 ff. Death’s reply to the Hermit is not in the B-recension. 

633. Note the allusion to the picture for which the text was written. The B-recension 
changes lines 634, 638 so as to remove the pictorial quality. 

641 ff. This stanza is marked ‘“Machabre doctour” in the French MS Bibl.nat.fonds 
francais 14989. The B-recension rewrites the stanza. 

642. With the French cp. the Italian Lauda, pubd. by Vigo, Danze Macabre, p. 101; the 
second stanza there reads :—‘‘Questa vita e come vento Che ’n un punto passar via.” 

643. Wake or winke. This formula, like flete or synke, is common for rime’s sake in 
Middle English. See Chaucer’s Pity 109, 110, PoFoules 482, Anelida 182, KnTale 1539; 
see the Confessio iii:1628, vi:334-5, Court of Love 311, Lydgate’s Troy Book i:439, iv :3825, 
etc. For the variant slepe or wake see SecNunTale 153, FlCourtesy 95, Troy Book iv :4123, 
v :271, etc. 

657 ff. This envoy is not in the B-recension. 

660. See note on Cavendish’s Visions 52, p. 527 here. 

665 ff. This stanza was printed by Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper in her Muses’ Library, 1737. 

666. Not worde by worde, etc. See note on translation, Walton’s Boethius A 19. 

670. Lydgate sometimes gives his name in his compositions; see prol. to Thebes 92, 
Troy Book v:3468. He mentions his birthplace in the prol. to his Fables of Aesop 32, in 
FaPrinces viii:194, cp. ix :3431. 

672. See Chaucer’s Venus line 81. 


LA DANCE MACABRE : FRENCH TEXT 


The manuscript from which the French Dance Macabre is here printed is no. 139 of 
the Bibliothéque Communale at Lille. It is bound with a printed copy, by Colard Mansion, 
of Gerson’s Dictes moraux des philosophes, marked Inc.D ii. The MS is of twenty leaves, 
containing a prose note on a sermon by Aubert Archbishop of Cologne and a note on the 
Mass, the Dance Macabre, the Trois Mors et Trois Vifs, and a copy of the Visio Phili- 
berti, in French verse. There are no headings or titles; the only ornament is coarsely-executed 
red capitals. The poem is written in long lines, in a commonplace but fairly early hand. 
Whether this volume still exists or not I cannot say. The Lille city-buildings were badly 
damaged by fire during the German occupation, and many books were destroyed; but the fate 
of this particular volume I have been unable to learn. 

Other texts of the French Dance Macabre which I have examined are :-— 

Bibl.nat.fonds lat. 14904, formerly St. Victor 516. A paper MS of nearly 200 leaves; has, 
prefixed, 72 leaves of vellum carrying tractates by Gerson and by Nicolas de Clemangis, 
especially the former, with the Dance among them. No ornament or color in the 72 leaves. 
Observe the association of the Dance Macabre again with the work of Gerson. 


LA DANCE MACABRE 427 


Bibl. nat. fonds francais 25434. A small volume, formerly a Celestins MS. Neatly 
written in small square hands, and containing various Dances and Débats, also Alain Chartier’s 
Breuiaire des nobles. 

Bibl. nat. fonds francais 25550. Vellum and paper, in various hands, some bad. A 
composite MS. The Dance is in two hands, the second a loose scrawl. 

Bibl. nat. fonds francais 1186. Paper, of 108 leaves, containing the Epistle of Othea 
to Hector, the Dance aux Aveugles, Dance Cupido, Dance de Fortune, etc. 

Bibl. nat. fonds francais 14989. A tiny book of fifteen leaves, containing the Dance only, 
in a hand ? later than the fifteenth century. 

Bibl. nat. fonds francais 995, formerly du roi 7310. A gorgeous halfhundred of vellum 
leaves, the upper half of each page a beautifully executed picture; very elaborate borders. 
The Trois Mors et Trois Vifs, and the Dance des Femmes, follow the Dance Macabre. 

Bibl.nat.fonds francais 1181 I have not seen. Langfors, Les Incipit, p. 237, mentions a 
MS in the Musée Condé at Chantilly, one at Tours, and one in the Bibl. nat. fonds frangais 1055. 


[Lille MS] 


Discite vos Coram cunctis qui cernitis istam 
Quantum prosit honor gaudia diuicie 

Tales estis enim natura morte futuro 
Qualis in effigie mortua turba vocat 


O creature raisonnable / qui desire vie eternelle 

Tu as cy doctrine notable / pour bien finer vie mortelle 

La danse macabre sappelle / qui chascun a danser aprent 

A homme et femme est naturelle / mort nespargne petit ne grant 


2 
En ce miroir chascun peult lire Qui le conuient ainsy danser Io 
Cilz est heureux qui bien sy mire Le mort le vif fait auancer 
Tu vois les plus grans commencher Car il nest nulz qui mort ne fiere 
Cest piteuse chose y penser Tout est forgie dune matiere 


3 
[pEaTH] Vous qui viuez certainement Quoy quil tarde ainsy danserez 
Mais quant dieu le scet soullement Aduisez comment vous ferez 20 
Damp pappe vous commencerez Comme le plus digne seigneur 
En ce point honnourez serez Aux grans maistres est deu honneur 


4 
[PorE} He fault il que la danse maine Le premier qui sui dieu en terre 
Jay eu dignite souueraine / En leglise comme saint pierre 
Et comme aultres mort me vient querre / Encor point morir ne cuidasse 30 
Mais la mort a tous maine guerre / Peu vault honneur qui si tost passe 


5 
{DEATH ] Et vous le nom pareil du monde Prince et seigneur grant emperere 
Laissier fault la pomme dor ronde / Armes ceptre tymbre baniere 
Je ne vous lairay pas derriere / Vous ne pouez plus seignourir 
Je maine tout cest ma maniere . Les filz dadam fault tous morir 40 


6 
{£MPEKOR | Je ne say deuant qui Jappelle / De la mort quainsy me demaine 
Armer me fault de pic de pelle / Et dun lincheul ce mest grant paine 
Sur tous ay eu grandeur mondaine / Et morir me fault pour tout gage 
Et quest ce de mortel demaine Les grans ne lont pas dauantage 


Latin, Line 1. coram] choream B. N. 14904. 24. est dieu etc., B. N. 14904. 
3. natura] matura B. N. 14904. 


428 


[pEaTH ] 


[CARDINAL] 


[DEATH | 


[KING] 


[DEATH ] 


[PATRIARCH ] 


[DEATH | 


[CONSTABLE] 


[DEATH ] 


LA DANCE MACABRE 


i 
Vous faittes lesbahy ce samble Cardinal sus legierement 
Sieuez les aultres hastiuement / Riens ny vault esbahissement 
Vous auez vescu haultement / Et en honneur a grant deuis 
Prenez en gre lesbatement / En grans honneurs se pert laduis 


8 


Jay bien cause de mesbahir /Quant Je me voy de sy pres pris 

La mort mest venu enuayr / Plus ne vestiray vaire ne gris 

Chappeau rouge & chappe de pris / Me fault laissier a grant destresse 
Je ne lauoye pas apruis Toute Joye fine en tristesse 


9 
Venez noble Roy couronnez Renomme de force & proesse 
Jadis fustes aduironnez / De grans pompes de grant noblesse 
Mais maintenant toute hautesse / Laisserez vous nestes pas seul 
Peu aurez de vostre ricesse / Le plu rice na que vng linceul 


10 


Je nay point aprins a danser / A notte na danse si sauuaige 

Helas on peult voir et penser / Que vault orgueil force lignage 
Mort destruit tout cest son vsage / Aussi tost le grant que le mendre 
Qui moins se prise plus est sage / A la fin fault deuenir cendre 


II 
Patriarce pour basse chiere / Vous ne pouez estre quitte 
Vostre double croix quauez chiere / Vng aultre aura cest equite 
Ne pensez plus a dignite / Ja ne serez pappe de Romme 
Pour rendre compte estes cite / folle esperance dechoit lomme 


I2 


Bien perchoy que mondains honneurs / mont decu pour dire le voir 
Mes Joyes tournent en doleurs Et que vault tant dhonneur auoir 


Trop hault mopter nest pas sauoir / Haulx estas gettent gens sans nombre 


Mais peu le veullent parceuoir A hault monter le fais encombre 


13 
Cest de mon droit que je vous maine / A la danse gent Connestable 
Le plus fort comme Charlemaine / Mort prent cest chose veritable 
Riens ny vault chiere espouentable / Ne forte armur a cest assault 
Dun cop Jabas le plus estable / Riens nest darmes quant mort assaut 


14 
Jauoye encore intencion / Dassaillir chasteaux forteresses 
Et mener a subiection / En acquerrant honneur ricesses 
Mais Je voy que toute prouesse / Mort met au bas cest grant despit 
Tout luy est vng douceur rudesse / Contre, la mort nul na respit 


15 
Que vous tirez la teste arriere / Arceuesque tirez vous pres 
Auez paour que on ne vous fiere / Ne doubtez vous venrez apres 
Nest pas tousiours la mort empres / Tout homme elle sieut coste a coste 
Rendre conuient debtes et prestz / Vne fois fault compter a loste 


64. Lille, by error, reads—tritresse. 


50 


60 


7° 


80 


90 


I0o 


IIo 


I20 


LA DANCE MACABRE 


16 


[aRcHBISHOP] Las Je ne say ou regarder Tant suit par mort a grant destroit 


[DEATH ] 


[CHEVALIER] 


[DEATH ] 


[BISHOP | 


[DEATH ] 


[squrrE] 


[DEATH ] 


[ABBE] 


126. Lille, by error, reads—pointe. 128. Lille reads grant contraire; B.N. 


Ou fuieray Je pour moy garder / Certes qui bien la congnoistroit 
Hors de raison Jamais nystroit Plus ne giray en chambre painte 


429 


Morir me conuient cest le droit / Quant faire fault cest grant [contrainte] 


17 
Vous qui entre les grans barons / Auez eu renon cheuallier 
Oublies trompettes clarons / Et me sieuez sans sommeillier 
Les dames solies resueillier / En faisant danser longue piece 
A aultre dansse fault veillier Ce que lun fait lautre despiece 


18 


Or aige este auctorisie en pluiseurs fais et bien fame 

Des grans et des petis prisie / Auec ce de dames ayme 

Ne oncques ne fui diffame / A la court de seigneur notable 
Mais a ce cop suis tout pasme / Desoubz le ciel na riens estable 


19 
Tantost naurez vaillant ce pic / Des biens du monde & de nature 
Euesques de vous est il pic / Non obstant vostre prelature 
Vostre fait gist en aduenture / De vos subgets fault rendre compte 
A chascun dieu fera droitture / Nest pas asseur qui trop hault monte 


20 


Le cuer ne me peult resiouir / des nouuelles que mort maporte 

Dieu vouldra de tous compte oyr / Cest ce que plus me descomforte 
Le monde aussy peu me conforte / Qui tous a la fin desherite 

Il retient tout nul riens nemporte / Tout se passe fors la merite 


21 


Auancies vous gent escuier Qui sauez de danser les tours 
Lance porties et escu hier / Et huy vous finerez voz Jours 
I] nest riens qui ne prengne cours / Dansez et pensez de suir 
Vous ne pouez auoir secours / II nest nul qui puist mort fuir 


22 


Puis que mort me tient en ses las Aumoins que Je puisse vng mot dire 
Adieu deduit adieu soulas / Adieu dames plus ne puis rire 

Pensez de lame qui desire repos ne vous chaille plus tant 

Du corps qui tous les Jours empire / Tout faut pourrir on ne scet quant 


23 
Abbe venez tost vous fuyez Nayes Ja la chiere esbahie 
Il conuient que la mort sieuez Combien que moult lauez haye 
Commandez adieu labbeye Qui gros et gras vous a nourry 
Tost pourriras a peu daye / Le plus grant est premier pourry 


24 
De cecy neusse point enuye Mais II conuient !e pas passer 
Las or nay Je pas en ma vie garde mon ordre sans casser 
Gardez vous de trop embracher / vous qui viuez au demourant 
Se vous voulez bien trespasser On sauise tart en morant 


25434,—contrainte. 


130 


140 


160 


170 


180 


190 


14904, 


430 LA DANCE MACABRE 


25 
[DEATH ] Bailly vous sauez quest Justice Et hault et bas en mainte guise 
Pour gouuerner toute polisce Venez tantost a ceste assise 
Je vous adiourne de main mise Pour rendre compte de voz fais 
Au grant Juge qui tout vng prise Vng chascun portera son fais 200 


26 


[BAILLY ] Heu dieu vecy dure journee De ce cop pas ne me gardoye 
Or est la chance bien tournee Entre Juges honneur auoye 
Et mort fait raualler ma joye Qui ma adiourne sans rappel 
Je ny voy plus ne tour ne voye / Contre la mort na point dappel 


27 
[DEATH ] Maistre pour vostre regarder En hault ne pour vostre clergie 210 
Ne pouez la mort retarder / Cy ne vault riens astrologie 
Toute la genealogie / Dadam qui fut le premier homme 
Mort prent ce dist theologie / tout fault morir pour vne pomme 


28 


[ASTRONOMER] Pour science ne pour degrez Ne puis auoir prouision 
Car maintenant tous mes regrez / Font morir a confusion 220 
Pour finale conclusion / Je ne say riens que plus descripue 
Je pers cy toute aduision Qui vouldra bien morir bien viure 


29 
[DEATH ] Bourgois hastez vous sans tarder / Vous nauez auoir ne ricesse 
Qui vous puist de mort retarder / Se des biens dont eustes largesse 
Auez bien vse cest sagesse / Daultrui vient tout Aultrui passe 230 
ffolz est qui damasser se bless / On ne scet pour qui on amasse 


30 
[BoURGEOIS ] Grant mal me fait si tost laissier / Rentes maisons cens nourreture 
Mais poures riches abaissier / Tu fais mort telle est ta nature 
Sage nest pas la creature / Damer trop les biens qui demeurent 
Au monde / et sont siens de droiture / Ceux qui plus ont plus enuis meurent 


31 
[DEATH ] Sire chanonne prebendez / Plus naurez distribucion 
Ne gros ne vous y atendez Prenez cy consolacion 
Pour toute retribucion / Morir vous conuient sans demeure 
Ja ny aurez dilacion / La mort vient quand on ne garde leure 


32 
[canon ] Cecy gaires ne me conforte / Prebendez fuis en mainte eglise 250 
Or est la mort plus que moy forte / Qui tout emmaine cest la guise 
Blanc supplis et aumuce grise / Me fault laissier & a mort rendre 
Que vault gloire sy tost bas mise / A bien morir doit chascun tendre 


33 
[DEATH ] Marchant regardez par decha Pluiseurs pays auez cherchiez 
A pie a cheual de piecha / Vous nen serez plus empeschies 260 
Jl conuient que par cy passez / De tous soings serez despeschies 
Tel couuoite quia assez / Vecy voz daranis jours marchies 


227. retarder)] garder, B. N. 14904. 255. Lille MS.—pas mise; B. N. 14904 bas misse. 
230. A aultruy passe. B. N. 14904. 264. B. N. 14904, 25434—wvostre desrain marchie. 
252. La guise] sa guise, B. N. 25434; B. N. Both these MSS have line-order 260, 264, 


14904 as here. 261, 262, 263. 


[MERCHANT] 


[DEATH ] 


[CHARTREUX ] 


[DEATH ] 


[SERGEANT] 


[DEATH ] 


[MonxK] 


[DEATH | 


[UsURER] 


LA DANCE MACABRE 


Jay este amont et aual Pour marchander ou Je pouoye 

Pour long tamps a pie a cheual / Mais maintenant pers toute Joye 
De tout mon pouoir acquerroie Et ay assez mort me constraint 

Bon fait auoir moyenne voye Qui trop embraisse mal estraint 


35 
Alez marchant sans plus rester Ne faites ja cy residence 
Vous ny pouez riens conquester / Vous aussy homme dabstinence 
Chartreux prenez en pacience / De plus viure nayes memoire 
ffaites vous valoir a la dansce / Sur tout homme mort a victoire 


36 
Je suis au monde piecha mort Pourquoy de viure ay moins enuye 
Ja soit que tout homme craint mort Puis que la char est assouuye 
Plaise a dieu que lame rauye Soit es cieulx apres mon trespas 
Cest tout neant de ceste vye / Tel est huy qui demain nest pas 


37 
Sergent qui portez celle mache / II samble que vous rebellez 
Pour neant faittes la grimace / Se on vous grieue sy appellez 
Vous estes de mort appellez Qui sy rebelle Jl se dechoit 
Les plus fors sont tost rauallez / Nest sy fort qui aussi fort ne soit 


38 
Moy qui suy Royal officier / Comment mose la mort frapper 
Je faisoie mon office hier Et elle me vient huy happer 
Je ne say quel part eschapper / Je suis pris decha et dela 
Malgre moy me laisse attraper / Enuis meurt qui apris ne la 


39 
Ha maistre par la passerez / Nayes Ja soing de vous deffendre 
Plus homme ne espouenterez / Apres moine sans plus attendre 
Ou pensez vous cy fault entendre Tantost aurez la bouce close 


431 


270 


280 


290 


300 


310 


Homme nest fors que vent et cendre / Vie dhomme est moult peu de chose 


40 
Jamaisse mieulx encore estre En cloistre et faire mon office 

Cest vng lieu deuot et bel estre Or ay Je comme fol et nice 

Ou tamps passe commis maint vice / Dequoy nay pas fait penitance 
Souffisant dieu me soit propice / Chascun nest pas Joyeux qui dansce 


41 
Vsurier de sens desriglez / Venez tost et me regardez 
Dusure estes tant auueuglez / Que dargent gaignier tout ardez 
Mais vous en serez bien lardez Car se dieu qui est merueilleux 
Na de vous pitie tout perdez A tout perdre est cop perilleux 


42 
Me conuient Jl sy tost morir / Ce mest grant paine & grant greuaunce 
Et ne me pourroit secourir Mon or mon argent ma cheuance 
Je vois morir la mort mauance Mais Jl men desplait somme toute 
Quesse de malle acoustumance / Tel a beaux yeulx qui ny voit goutte 


296. B. N. 14904 reads I] nest fort quaussi fort ne soit. 


320 


330 


432 


[DEATH ] 


[PHYSICIAN] 


[DEATH | 


[GALLANT] 


[DEATH ] 


[ADVOCATE] 


[DEATH ] 


[ MINSTREL] 


LA DANCE MACABRE 


43 
Vsure est tant mauuais pechie Comme chascun dit & racompte 
Et cest homme qui approuchie Se sent de la mort nen tient compte 340 
Meismes largent que ma main compte Encore a vsure me preste 
Ji denra de retour au compte Nest pas quitte qui doit de reste 


44 
Medecin a tout vostre orine Veez vous Jcy que amender 
Jadis seustes de medecine Assez pour pourueoir commander 
Et vous vient la mort demander Comme aultres vous conuient morir 350 
Vous ny pouez contremander Bon mire est qui se scet garir 


45 
Longtamps a quen lart de phisique Je ay mis toute mestudie 
Jauoye science et practique pour guarir mainte maladie 
Je ne say que Je contredie / Plus ny vault herbe ne rachine 
Nautre remede quoy gon die / Contre la mort na medecine 360 


46 
Gentil amoureux Josne et frisque Qui vous cuidies de grant valoir 
Vous estes pris la mort vous picque Le monde lairez a doleur 
Trop lauez ayme cest folour Et a morir peu regarde 
Tantost vous changerez coulour Beaute nest que ymage farde 


47 
Helas or ny a il secours / Contre mort / adieu amourettes 370 
Moult tost va Jonnesse a decours / Adieu chappeaux boucages flourettes 
Adieu amans et pucellettes / Souuiengne vows de moy souuent 
Et vous mirez se saiges estes Petite pluye abat grant vent 


48 
Aduocas sans long proces faire / Venez vostre cause plaidier 
Bien auez sceu les gens attraire De pieca non pas dhuy ne dier 380 


Conseil ne vous peult cy aydier Au grant Juge vous fault venir 
Sauoir le direz sans cuidier Bon fait Justice preuenir 


49 
Cest bien droit que raison se face Ne Je ny say mettre deffence 
Contre mort na respit ne grace Nul nappelle de sa sentence 
Jay eu de lautruy quant Je y pense Dequoy Je doubte estre repris 390 
A craindre fait Jour de vengence / Dieu rendra tout a Juste pris 


50 
Menestrez qui danses et nottes Sauez et auez bel maintien 
Pour faire esiouir sos et sottes /Quen dittes vous alons nous bien 
Monstrer vous fault puis que vous tien Aux autres cy vng tour de danse 
Le contredire ny vault rien Maistre doit monstrer sa sciance 400 


51 
De dansser ainsy neusse cure Certes tres enuis Je men mesle 
Car de mort nest paine plus dure / Jay mis soubz le banc ma vielle 
Plus ne corneray sauterelle Ne aultre danse mort me retient 
Jl me fault obeir a elle Tel danse a qui au cuer nen tient 


383. B. N. 14904 reads Sauoir se deues, etc. 391. B. N. 14904 reads A craindre est le jour, etc. 


{pEATH ] 


[parson ] 


[pEATH ] 


[LABORER ] 


[DEATH ] 


[CoRDELIER] 


[DEATH ] 


[INFANT] 


[DEATH ] 


LA DANCE MACABRE 433 


52 
Passez Cure sans plus songier Je sens questes abandonnez 410 
Le mort le vif souliez mengier Mais vous serez aux vers donnez 
Vous fustes Jadis ordonnez Miroir daultrui estre exemplaire 
De voz fais serez guerdonnez A toute paine est deu sallaire 


53 
Vueille ou non Jl fault que me rende Jl nest homme qui mort nasaille 
Hee de mes parociens offrande Narray Jamais ne funeraille 420 
Deuant le Juge fault que Jaille Rendre compte las dolloureux 
Or ay grant paour que ne faille Qui dieu quitte bien est eureux 


54 
Laboureux qui en soing et paine Auez vescu tout vostre tamps 
Morir fault cest chose certaine Reculler ny vault ne contens 
De mort deuez estre contens Car de grant soussy vous deliure 430 
Approchies vous Je vous attens / Fol est qui cuide tousiours viure 


55 
La mort ay souhaidie souuent Mais voulentier Je la fuysse 
Jamaisse mieulx feist pluye ou vent / Estre es vingnes ou Je fouysse 
Aultre plus grant plaisir y prinse Car de paour pers tout propos 
Or nest Jl qui de ce pas ysse Au monde na point de repos 440 


56 
Faittes voye vous auez tort / Laboureux apres cordeliers 
Souuent auez preschie de mort / Se vous devez moins marueillier 
Ja ne sen fault esmay baillier Jl nest sy fort qui mort nareste 
Sy fait bon a morir veillier A toute heure la mort est preste 


57 
Quest ce de viure en ce monde Nul homme a sceurete ny demeure 450 
Toute vanite y abonde Puis vient la mort qui tout court sceure 
Mendicite point ne masseure Des malfais fault payer lamende 
En petite heure dieu labeure / Sage est le pecheur qui samende 


58 
Petit enfant nagaires ne Au monde auras peu de plaisance 
Vieng a la danse sans mener Comme aultres Car mort a puissance 460 
Sur tous du Jour de la naissance Conuient chascun a mort offrir 
ffol est qui nen a congnoissance Qui plus vit plus a a souffrir 


59 
A A A Je ne say parler Enffant suy Jay la langue mue 
Hier nasqui huy men fault aller Je ne say quentree & yssue 
Riens nay meffait mais de peur sue / Prendre en gre me fault cest le mieux 
Lordonnance dieu ne se mue / Aussy tost muert Jonne que vieux 


60 


Cuidez vous de mort eschapper Clerc esperdu pour reculler 

Il ne sen fault Ja defripper Tel cuide souuent hault aller 

Quon voit a cop tost raualler Prenez en gre alons ensamble 

Car riens ny vault le rebeller / Dieu pugnist tout quant bon lui samble 480 


414. B. N. 14904 reads—daltrui & examplaire. 452. B. N. 14904 has—qua tous cour seure. 
441. Lille miswrites tost for tort. 468. B. N. 14904 has Je ne fais quentrer, etc. 


434 


[cLERK] 


[DEATH | 


[HERMIT] 


[DEATH ] 


LA DANCE MACABRE 


61 


ffault Jl que Jonne clere seruant Qui en seruice prent plaisir 
Pour cuider venir en auant Meure si tost cest desplaisir 

Je sui quitte de plus choisir Aultre estat Jl fault quainsy dansce 
La mort ma prins a son loysir Moult remaint de ce que fol pensce 


62 


Clerc point ne fault faire reffus De danser faites vous valoir 490 
Vous nestes pas seul leuez sus Pourtant moins vous en doit challoir 

Venez apres cest mon vouloir Homme nourry en hermitage 

Ja ne vous en conuient doloir / Vie nest pas seur heritage 


63 
Pour vie dure ou solitaire Mort ne donne de vie espace 
Chascun le voit sy sen fault taire Or requier dieu que vng don me face 500 
Cest que tous mes pechies efface Bien sui contens de tous ses biens 
Desquelz Jay vse de sa grace / Qui na souffissance Jl na riens 


64 
Cest bien dit / ainsy doit on dire Jl nest qui soit de mort deliure 
Qui mal vit Jl aura du pire Sy pense chascun de bien viure 
Dieu pesera tout a la liure / Bon y fait penser soir & main 510 
Meilleur science na en liure / Jl nest qui ait point de demain 


65 
Vng roy mort tout nu couchie en uers 
Vous qui estes en pourtraiture / Veez danser estas diuers 
Pensez quest humaine nature Ce nest fors que viande aux vers 
Je le monstre qui gis enuers Sy ay Je este Roy couronnez 
Tels serez vous bons et paruers Tous estas sont aux ver donnez 520 


66 


Vng maistre qui est au bout de la dance 
Riens est dhomme qui bien y pensce Cest tout vent chose transitore 
Chascun le voit par ceste dansce Pour ce vous qui veez listore 
Retenez le bien en memoire / Car homme et femme elle ammoneste 
Dauoir de paradis la gloire / Eureux est qui es cieulx fait feste 


67 
Mais aucun sont a qui nen chault / Comme sil ne fust paradis 
Ne enfer helas Jlz auront chault / Les liures que firent Jadis 
Les sains le monstrent en beaux dis Acquittez vous qui cy passez 
Et faittes bien plus que nen dis / Bien fais vault moult aux trespassez 536 


Mortales dominus cunctos In luce creauit 

Vt capiant meritis gaudia summa polj 

Felix ille quidem mentem iugiter illuc 

Dirigit atque vigil noxia queque cauet 

Nec tamen Infelix [sceleris] quen penitet actj 5 
Quique suum facinus plangere s(e)pe solet 

Sed viuunt homines tamquam mors nulla sequatur 


487. B. N. 14904,—a son plaisir. reads sterilis, Lille in 6 has spe, in 7 
513. B. N. 14904 Vous qui en ceste pourtraiture. vimunt (ur). 
Latin, line 5. Sceleris is from B. N. 14904; Lille 


PAGE 145] EPITHALAMIUM 435 


Et velud infernis fabula vana foret 

Cum doceat sensus viuentes more resoluj 

Atque herebj penas pagina sacra probet 10 
Quas qui non metuit Jnfelix prorsus & amens 

Viuit et exinitus sentiet ille rogam 

Sit igitur cuncti sapientes viuere certent 

Vt nichil inferni sit metuenda palus 


EPITHALAMIUM FOR GLOUCESTER 


1. gladde aspectis, favoring regard. See FaPrin.E 88 here, and see FaPrin. iii :2763, 
of Fortune’s face; see Thebes 218, 275, 383-4, and Root’s notes on Chaucer’s Troilus ii:682, 
iii :716. 

14. Jubiter’s cheyne. Jupiter maintained the sanctity of laws, oaths, and treaties; his 
consort Juno presided over marriage. In the next two stanzas Lydgate is not clear. Alliance 
excludes strife, he says; then, that wars are predetermined in the stars; then that God, by 
instituting marriage, has made it possible to contravene the stars. His misuse or omission of 
verbs, as e.g. line 21, confuses still more. 

21. “(Of which) the first cause (is) portrayed in the stars.” 

24. to voide. If we read do voide, the sense will be “Nor force destiny to yield, except 
God, who rules all’, etc. 

29-31. “There is more than one example in books, (whoso will consider the deeper 
meaning) carried out in olden time’, etc. 

31. Calydoyne and Arge, Calydon and Argos. See note on 138 below, and Troy Book 
v :1207 ff. 

42. werre stynt. The marriage of Henry V to the French princess Katherine, in 1420, 
was supposed to end the war and to secure the French crown to their descendants. 

55. duchy of Holand. See introduction above. 

56. Brutus Albyoun, the Albion of Brut, a mythical warrior who wandered thither after 
_ the fall of Troy, and founded a settlement. See Garland 405. 

69-70. “whose birth to describe, (she) is by descent” etc. 

71 ff. This list of personages with whom comparison is made is a convention often 
used by Lydgate. He has two such catalogues in this poem, one of women and one of men; 
there is a long list of women in the Flower of Courtesy, a still longer in the Valentine to the 
Virgin, printed by MacCracken, p. 304 ff.; there is one of men in the Coronation of Henry 
VI, and shorter lists in TemGlass 405 ff., Horns Away 27 ff., and the Troy Book envoy. See 
the list in Black Knight 365 ff., or the prose Epistle of the Lover’s Mass, p. 213 here, or 
Cavendish, p. 382 here. See Feylde’s Controversy between a Lover and a Jay; see p. 69 of 
the Percy Society ed. of Hawes’ Pastime. 

72. Polixseene. Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, beloved by Achilles. See note 
Garl. 855. 

77. be. The scribe inserted this word above, with a caret. 

83-4. The word beo, 83, is omitted by the scribe. With the rime-words here, comprehendid: 
amendid, cp. the same two-line formula in FlCourtesy 188-9, DuorMercat 391-2, Albon 
1:386-7, St. Edmund i:408-9; and in Chaucer’s Anelida 83-4. It might be suggested that 
the 1532 print of the Flower of Courtesy, our only text, be read comprehende in line 188 
instead of commende, with Skeat’s added her. But see ResonandSens 327-8 beside ibid. 1101-2. 

87. avysee. This word, meaning “well-advised”, is fairly common in Lydgate; there 
are a dozen cases in the Troy Book alone. It is used by Chaucer in the Legend 1521; and 
I may suggest that the rime-word in FlCourtesy 142 is avisee, as in 215, rather than the emen- 
dation offered by Skeat. 

88. brydil leede, a very common metaphor in Lydgate. See “And thus fals lust doth 
your bridil leede”, FaPrinces i1:838; see ibid., 1394, 1999, 2520, 6729, etc. 

96. Nowe, omitted from the text, is supplied in the margin by Shirley, with a caret. 


436 NOTES [PAGE 147 


99. A heven it is. A Chaucerian locution. Cp. “It was an heven upon him for to see,” 
Troilus ii1:637; similarly ibid., ii:826, iii:1742, SqTale 271, 558. Lydgate uses the phrase Troy 
Book i:2048-9, etc. The word paradys instead of heven appears in Troy Book i:1590, St. Albon 
i:261, etc; see Reproof 5-6 here. 

104-5. Hir eyeghen saygne, etc. Cp. Chaucer’s BoDuch 876-7, “. . . hir eyen seyde 

: my wrath is al foryive’. Cp. p. 286 of the transl. of Orléans ed. for the Roxburghe 
Club ‘Me thynkith yowre eyen mercy seith.” 

112. Ce bien raysoun. This was presumably the motto of Jacqueline. The use of such 
mottoes was extremely common in this period; a long list may be read in the Assembly 
of Ladies. 

114. “One of those the greatest-born alive.” 

123. oon pe beste. This Middle English idiom is recurrent in both Chaucer and Lydgate; 
cp: “among kynges he was oon the beste”, FaPrinces i:5979, or “oon the best knyht”, ibid., 
viii :3227, etc. 

129. daring doo. This is termed by NED a “pseudo-archaism”, and explained as a verbal 
phrase, “daring to do”, which was in later English treated as a substantive combination. See 
Chaucer’s Troilus v:837, “dorring don”; the passage is imitated by Lydgate, Troy Book 
11 :4861 ff., see 4869. Spenser, ShephCal. October 65 and December 43, Faerie Queene ii:4, 42 
and vi:5,37, uses the word substantively, as does Scott in Ivanhoe. But Lydgate’s treatment 
here has all the appearance of a substantive. 

133. hous of ffaame. Cp. “Set and registred in the Hous of Fame”, FaPrinces iv :122,— 
“May be registrid in the Hous off Fame”, ibid. vi:514, etc. See note on FaPrin. B 95 here, 
and see Troy Book iii :4254. 

134. worpy nyen, the Nine Worthies, i.e., Hector, Alexander, Caesar, Joshua, David, 
Judas Maccabaeus, Arthur, Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bouillon. In the presentation of the 
Nine Worthies in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, Pompey and Hercules are included. 

138. Tedeus, Tydeus, son of Oeneus king of Calydon, who, being obliged to flee from 
his native country, took shelter with the king of Argos, wedded his daughter, and became 
the father of a son Diomedes who subsequently rescued the Calydonian royal house from 
usurpers. Tydeus’ figure is greatly magnified in the form of the Theban story used by 
Lydgate for his Siege of Thebes, and the mention of Tydeus as a superman, both here and 
in St. Edmund 1:1036, suggests comment as to the relative dates of these works. 

143. with pe Allegorye. The text of Scripture was held to require several interpreta- 
tions, the “literal, tropological, allegorical, and anagogical”. Until the work of Erasmus and 
Colet, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Bible was treated predominantly 
by the allegorical method of exposition. Gloucester’s MSS presented to Oxford include many 
works of this sort. 

148. With this list see note on line 71 above. 

161. Sanz plus vous belle. Gloucester’s heraldic motto was “Loyalle et belle’; he may 
have used a special motto for Jacqueline. Cp. the two mottoes of the Black Prince, ‘““Homout” 
for war, “Ich dene” for peace. 

176. ymeneus, Hymen, god of marriage; usually said to be a son of one of the Muses. 
With this line cp. Thebes 826. 

178. Juvo. Shirley’s spelling of Juno. She presided over marriage. 

179-80. Phylogenye. A false rendering by Shirley of Philology, whose marriage to Mer- 
cury god of eloquence was described by Martianus Capella in a work of the fifth century, 
one of the influential books of the Middle Ages. Lydgate refers to it in Thebes 833-44, 
in St. Edmund i1:95-104; see also FaPrinces iii:66, and Chaucer’s MerchTale 488-90. 

182. thryes thre. This convenient rime-formula is often used by Lydgate when he 
mentions the Muses. See Thebes 832, FaPrinces 1:459, iii:12. Or the formula is “in noumbre 
nyne”, as in St. Edmund i:91, FaPrinces iv :76. 

189. neodful. Shirley’s spelling of needful. 


PAGE 149] LETTER TO GLOUCESTER 437 


LETTER TO GLOUCESTER 


4. hand... quake. The quaking hand or pen is a very frequent device with Lydgate; 
see TemGlass 947, BlKnight 181, St. Margaret 57, St. Edmund iii:89, St. Albon i:928, Troy 
Book i:4427 etc., FaPrinces i:5517 etc. Chaucer has the locution Troilus iv :13-14. 

9 ff. The first group of metaphors is medical. Gloucester, a man of self-indulgence, was 
constantly under medical care, and took great interest in medicine; his library contained 
many books on the subject. Cp. Hoccleve’s Male Reégle 446-8. 

12. Dragge nor dya. Cp. dyas and dragges, Piers Plowman B xx:173. The word 
dragge, an early form of drug, was accord. to NED used only in plural; but see the sing. 
here and in line 55. Dia means any medical preparation; it is the Greek prefix “through” 
used as a separate word. —Bury town. Was Lydgate writing at the monastery? 

17. Ship was ther noon, etc. The metaphor changes to monetary, and means that there 
was no gold coin in Lydgate’s purse. In this period the noble, half-noble, and quarter-noble bore 
on the obverse the design of a crowned king in a ship; cp. Hoccleve’s poem to Somer line 21, 
and the “vj shippis grete”’, ie., six gold nobles, of EETS ed., i, p. 64. Similar metaphors 
are used by Aristophanes, who in The Birds calls Athenian coins “owlets”, from the stamp 
they bore; and by Dante, who in Paradiso xviii:133 censures the Papacy for preferring 
John the Baptist to Peter or Paul,—this meaning the figure of John on the gold florin. 
Also, in A Mirror for Magistrates ii p. 134 (Haslewood’s ed.) the poem on Humphrey of 
Gloucester says of Beaufort (stanza 24) that “Not God’s angels, but angels of old gold Lift 
him aloft.” 

seilis reed, etc. In this period sails were stained red or particolored. See Nicolas’ 
Hist. of the Royal Navy i:469, 471, and the directions for dyeing the sails of Edward III's 
ship; see Chaucer’s Legend 654 for Cleopatra’s “purpre sail,” i.e., crimson. 

20. ebbe. See FaPrinces iii:69 for note. 

25. from the Tour. The Mint was in the Tower of London after 1329, but for how 
long is uncertain. See Ruding, Annals of the Coinage of Britain, 5 vols., 1817-19. 

_ 27. ffretyng Ettk, a devouring fever. This phrase, “gredy etik”, and the word etik are 
common in Lydgate. See line 45 below; see FaPrinces ii:3739-43, 3889-92, iii:138, 695, 3724, 
4286, 4029, iv:1103, vi:1323, etc. 

28. cotidian. A fever persisting daily, instead of recurring as tertian or quartan. 

29. Sol and Luna, the sun and moon, i.e., alchemical terms for gold and silver. Neither 
planet was shining upon the poet. 

30. no cros, etc. The English silver coins of the fifteenth century bore on the obverse 
a crowned male head (“visage”), and on the reverse a large slender cross. 

35-6. an ernest grote. The agreement between buyer and seller was clinched by pay- 
ment of a groat as “earnest-money” or guarantee. When the bargain was completed in an 
ale-house, as was frequently the case, the groat was spent in liquor.—stant in aventure, stands 
in peril, is shaky. 

37. callyd to the lure, summoned to Indigence by her lure. See note on Dance Macabre 
207 for lure. 

39. recure. This form of recover, used transitively, is exceedingly common in Lyd- 
gate, and common in him alone. See note on Dance Macabre 311 here. 

43. boklersbury, the London street occupied by grocers and apothecaries; see Stow’s 
Survey, ed. Kingsford, i:260. 

46. aurum potabile, drinkable gold, the alchemical specific against age and its ills; see 
Ripley’s Compend, line 160 here. 

47. quynt essence, the “fifth essence”, the element above the four earthly elements of 
earth, air, fire, and water; i.e., ether. Later, the concentration of pure quality in anything. —/n, 
read Is? 

51. tonne attamyd, pierced (and drained) your cask. The verb attame rarely has in 
Lydgate the simple original meaning “to pierce, to broach”, as literally in Piers Plowman 
B xvii:68, metaphorically in Chaucer’s prologue to the NPTale 52. It usually means in 
Lydgate ‘“‘to lay hands on, meddle with, undertake”. 


438 NOTES [PAGE 150 


52. nichil habet. A nihil or nichil was the return made by a sheriff to the executor 
when the party named in the writ had no goods on which levy could be made. The first 
case NED is of 1585. 

53. tisyk, phthisis, i.e., consumption with its attendant dry cough or asthma. 

59. cros nor pyl. The cross was the mark stamped on the obverse of English silver 
coins; see note on line 30 above. The “pile” was the depression made by the stamping instru- 
ment on the reverse of such a coin. 


FALL OF PRINCES :A 


1 ff. Lydgate’s opening prologue restates a part of Laurent’s, declaring the right of 
translators to remake, describing the magnitude of this particular task, and commenting on the 
folly of princes in supposing Fortune to be stable. The immediate problem is then taken 
up, and in his own person Lydgate laments his incapacity and his loss of his lodestar 
Chaucer. The well-known list of Chaucer’s works follows, after which, remarking that 
poets were of old held in high esteem by princes, Lydgate proceeds to the praise of his 
patron Humphrey of Gloucester. With another regret as to his own inadequacy, Lydgate 
closes the prologue. 

The portion of this which is derived from Laurent is relatively small, and is much padded 
by Lydgate, who also occasionally misunderstands his original;—see below 4-5 and 36-37. 
Laurent’s first desire, in his own proheme, was to explain why he was executing another 
version of the De Casibus, which he had so recently translated. He says that a man diligent 
in the pursuit of knowledge may change his “conseil de bien en mieulx’, just as a potter 
may break his vessel to give it a better form. And such license to improve holds good not 
merely for a man’s own work but for that of another, if the task be undertaken without 
“enuye ne arrogance”. Then Laurent says that he has already translated this work, following 
closely the subtle artificial language of Boccaccio; but that even those who call themselves 
clerks and men of letters suffer from great ignorance, and he has come to realize the necessity 
of rendering Latin books in such terms as can be understood without much labor. He then 
commends the De Casibus as of “tres singulier prix’, and its lesson as greatly needed; 
he states his intention of giving at length those histories which Boccaccio had merely touched, 
by which he evidently means the group-chapters with their brief mention of many notables. 
He considers that in so passing them over Boccaccio was brief not from lack of knowledge but 
because he thought others as well-informed as himself. He, Laurent, will enlarge on these 
points to give the work completeness. 

This prologue is modified by some of the French printers, and the form of its text which 
Lydgate used is uncertain. It may be read, as printed by du Pré, Paris 1483, in Bergen’s 
ed. of FaPrinces, i, pp. lii-liv. A text from MS is printed by Hortis, Opere latine del Boccaccio, 
Trieste, 1879, pp. 740-742. 

4-5. Laurent, describing the scope of the De Casibus, says that it includes the histories 
of all the great from the beginning of the world “iusques a Iehan roy de France mort 
prisonicr en angleterre.” The assumption that this last event marks the date of Laurent’s 
work is Lydgate’s error.—Theere, i.e., The yeere. 

13-14. For the simile of the potter cp. Jeremiah 18:4. 

20. Fro good to better. In Laurent, “de bien en mieulx”’. The French phrase, as also 
“de mieulx en mieulx”, seems to have been frequent in courtly poetry. Granson uses the 
latter in one of his ballade-refrains, and it appears in Lydgate’s Temple of Glass 310. The 
phrase “De bien en mieulx’ was apparently one of Charles V’s mottoes, see Delisle’s 
Librairie de Charles V, i:128. We find “Fro good to better” in Lydgate’s St. Edmund i:361 
and in his Pilgrimage 23696; the phrase “Fro wele to better” is in the Flower and Leaf 550. 
Similarly, “Fro bet to wers” appears in FaPrinces v:2339. 

21-22. Note the stanza-liaison, frequent in this poem, and not uncommon in Lydgate. 

24. chaff ... corn. See Chaucer, Legend 312, 529, and MLTale 603. 

27. colours, i.e., of rhetoric. See note on G 46 below, on Cavendish’s Visions 61. 


PAGE 157] FALL OF PRINCES: A 439 


29-35. This follows Laurent :—‘que on le face par bonte de couraige & par mouvement de 
pure charite qui en soy ne contient enuye ne arrogance.” 

36-37. Lydgate thinks that the previous translation of the De Casibus was not by 
Laurent. But the French is explicit. 

45-46. requerid Off estatis, urged by men of rank. Laurent says “a lenhortement & 
requeste daulcuns.” 

50-77. An excursus by Lydgate. 

78-84. This is an expansion of Laurent’s words as to the ignorance of even the clerks 
in his time; see above. 

85-91. Here Lydgate restates Laurent’s announced intention of filling out the parts of 
the De Casibus which Boccaccio had treated summarily. As pointed out in the introduction 
to the poem here, such an expansion destroyed Boccaccio’s effect of varied focus. See note 
on 141-154 below. 

92-98. Although this expansion of Laurent’s words apparently is endorsed by Lydgate, 
it can be paralleled by many passages rejecting “prolixite”’ or refusing to describe in detail. 
Each is a formula. 

99-126 expand two sentences of moderate length in the French. 

127-140 expand phrases of a long sentence in Laurent.—140. prince edward, the Black 
Prince, victor at Poitiers. 

141-154. Lydgate follows Laurent in his alteration of Boccaccio. The Latin is: “Absit 
tamen vt omnes dixerim [i.e., that I should discuss al/ illustrious men and women]. Quis 
enim mortalium tanti foret vt infinito posset labori suffcere? Set ex claris quos clarissimos 
excerpsisse sat erit.” The text of Boccaccio used by Laurent we do not yet know, but 
Laurent gives no part of this reason, saying that Boccaccio did not make his omissions be- 
cause of ignorance, but because “les reputa communes et cogneues aux autres comme a soy.” 

162-175. Here Lydgate uses a bit not of Laurent’s own preface, but of his translation of 
Boccaccio’s preface, which was retained in the second French version. In some MSS the 
text is more complete than in others; see Bergen’s ed. i, p. li. There we find “comme se ilz 
eussent endormie fortune par herbes ou par enchantemens ou ainsi comme se ilz eussent 
fermees leurs seignouries a croz de fer a roche daymant.” 

182. seith ... chekmat. See note FaPrinces D 52 here. 

183-224 are an excursus by Lydgate. 

205 is parenthetical. 

211-12. For this proverb see Chaucer’s SqTale 483. Skeat there cites from Othello 
11,3 :276, from Cotgrave, from George Herbert. Holthausen, Anglia 14:320, gives 14th century 
examples, mainly Latin and German; and Lowes, Archiv 124:132, prints a passage from 
Jacobus de Voragine. It was evidently a commonplace of the Middle Ages; it occurs in a 
French collection of proverbs cited by Naetebus, p. 137, in the Geneva text of Proverbes des 
Philosophes as ed. by Ritter, 1880, and is used by Surrey in his poem opening “Suche way- 
warde wais hath Love”. 

239. Cp. Lydgate’s DuorMercat. 498-99, Black Knight 176-77, and line 456 below. 

241-45. This refusal of Calliope and the Muses to aid in “compleynyng” is a formula, 
a convention of formal poetry. See below 456-58, Temple of Glass 952-4, Troy Book iii :5428 
ff. Chaucer in his Troilus had twice called upon the Furies to assist in narrating his tragedy. 

243. sugre ...galle. The Muses, Lydgate says, refuse to mingle the sugar of their 
“rethorik swete’ with the bitterness of woe. In Lydgate and the Transition poets, elo- 
quence is “thensugerd pocioun of Elyconys welle”’, as Skelton says. See GarlLaurell 73-4, 
Court of Love 22, Bokenam’s St. Anne 57, etc. Also, when Fate or Fortune overthrows the 
proud, the sugar of life is “meynt with bittir gall” (FaPrinces i:4536) and the tragedy is 
consummated. Here and in 456-58 below the Muses take no part in woful narrative; in 
Thebes 828 ff. they are not present at the inauspicious wedding of Oedipus. See also Duor- 
Mercat. 505 ff. 

246 ff. This long passage on Chaucer, by no means the only allusion in this poem, 
could hardly have been included without Gloucester’s approval. In this connection we may 


440 NOTES [PAGE 160 


query if Humphrey’s naming of his illegitimate daughter “Antigone” was so much classical 
as in remembrance of “Antigone the whyte”, her of the sweet song, in Chaucer’s Troilus. 

248-9. The Monk’s Tale is meant; see FaPrinces ix :3421-27. 

253-73. The mention of comedies and tragedies in conjunction sends Lydgate on a 
digression to Seneca’s tragedies, Cicero’s ‘“‘fressh ditees”, Petrarch’s De Remediis utriusque 
Fortunae, and Boccaccio. The “ditees” ascribed to Cicero mean not so much his surviving bits 
of verse as his “dictes’” or utterances. 

257. petrak. The spelling of Petrarch’s name as Patrak or Petrak is frequent if not 
predominant in English MSS; it occurs in a number of CantTales MSS in the Clerk’s 
headlink, and in MSS of this poem. See Bergen’s ed. iii:3859, viii:61, 66, 87, 183, etc. 
And Delisle’s Librairie de Charles V mentions, p. 371, “un livre appellé Patrac.” See line 37 
of extract K, below. 

259. The work here alluded to is Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortunae, which as 
Lydgate says is divided into two books of dialogues, the first set between Gaudium (or Spes) 
and Ratio, the second between Dolor and Ratio. There was a copy of “Franciscus de remediis 
fortuitorum” among the manuscripts which Gloucester in 1439 presented to the University 
of Oxford. The work is again alluded to in this poem iv :109. 

281 ff. After a transitional stanza, Lydgate returns to the matter of Chaucer’s works. 
Skeat comments on this list in Oxford Chaucer i:22-25. The stanzas containing it are printed 
in my Chaucer Manual, pp. 58-60 from the 1554 print of the FaPrinces, and by Miss Spurgeon 
in Chaucer Allusions 1:37-43 from MSS Harley 1766 and 4203. 

284. trophe. There are but two known occurrences of this word in Middle English, 
one in Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale 127, the other here. Discussion of Chaucer’s “Trophee” has 
thus far most substantially resulted in Kittredge’s suggestion of a confusion, by Chaucer or 
in Chaucer’s source, between the “trophees” or columns set up by Hercules and Bacchus at 
the two ends of the world, and a book or author narrating the life of Hercules, of whom 
the Monk is speaking. This confusion, as Kittredge points out, might be caused by such a 
phrase as “ad Herculis Liberique trophaea”, which occurs in the so-called Letter of Alexander 
to Aristotle; the word Liber (Bacchus) might be understood as liber (book). See Kit- 
tredge’s paper in the Putnam Anniversary Volume, 1909. 

An earlier explanation of the MoTale allusion was Skeat’s identification of “Trophee” 
or “Pillar” with Guido delle Colonne or Guido de Columpnis, in whose Historia Trojana 
Hercules is a figure, and who might be cited, by his translated surname, as authority for 
statements about Hercules. 

But although the passage of the MoTale was doubtless known to Lydgate, it was not 
certainly in his mind here; and part of what he says is based on a quite different, and 
definite, piece of knowledge. He is aware that the original of Chaucer’s Troilus was 
written in Italian, “in lumbard tunge”, and he says that this original was called Trophe. He 
does not say, any more than Chaucer said, that the principal source of Troilus was the 
same “Bochas’” whom he is here following for the Fall of Princes; and it may be that he does 
not know it. But while Chaucer acknowledged none but a Latin source for his romantic 
tragedy, Lydgate is possessed of the fact that the original was in Italian. Two questions 
therefore follow :—Where did Lydgate obtain that fact?—and,—Why does he call Boccaccio’s 
Filostrato “Trophe”? 

On the former point, Prof. Kittredge, in his study of Chaucer’s Lollius, HarvStudClass- 
Philol 28, asserts that Chaucer’s setting-up of “Lollius’ to represent his various sources for 
the Troilus was a transparent literary artifice well understood by contemporary men of letters, 
and that Chaucer himself gave his “hearty consent” to the “common knowledge’ that the 
work was really from the Italian. This passage of Lydgate Prof. Kittredge regards as 
proof. But considering Lydgate’s dependence upon Gloucester’s library in this translation, 
I think it as probable that his information regarding a “Lombard” original of the Troilus 
derived from an Italian scholar in Gloucester’s entourage, or from Gloucester himself, the 
owner of so many Petrarch and Boccaccio volumes. The monk’s scrap of knowledge about 
Dante, his access to Coluccio Salutati’s declamation on Lucretia, came in all likelihood from 


PAGE 161] FALL OF PRINCES: A 441 


his patron; and if Humphrey recognized the debt of Chaucer to the Italian for his Troilus-story, 
he was critic of letters as well as patron and collector. This is conjecture, and not fact; 
but there seems more probability of it than of the situation which Prof. Kittredge’s clairvoy- 
ance has depicted. 

On the second point there is little to be said. Although Chaucer made occasional use 
of Guido delle Colonne’s Historia Trojana in his Troilus, it is unlikely that Lydgate’s “Trophe” 
refers to Guido, as Skeat has suggested for Chaucer’s Trophee in the MoTale. Lydgate 
knew Guido, and had translated his Trojan chronicle in the Troy Book, there speaking con- 
stantly of the author as “Guido”. Moreover, he is here definitely talking of a book not in 
Latin. Prof. Kittredge opines that Lydgate has carelessly shifted the Monk’s Tale allusion, 
and that as “a constitutional blunderer” his statement “need trouble us no further”. Upon 
which I may comment that even a Homer-epigone nods not all the time. The connection of 
“Trophee” with the Troilus is at present unclear to us; but more knowledge of manuscript- 
conditions may yet show us that the transfer of names has an explanation. 

For an interesting suggestion on the gloss “Ille vates Chaldaeorum Trophaeus” in two 
of the best of the CantTales MSS, see Tupper in MLNotes, vol. 31. 

291. Chaucer’s translation of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae. 

292. The bracketed word is from MS Bodley 263; our MS reads &. 

294. thastlabre, the Astrolabe. Tottel’s 1554 print reads “that labour”. 

299-300. domefieng, etc. Late medieval Latin domificare, “to build houses”, was used 
astrologically to mean “to divide the heavens into twelve equal houses or mansions, to locate the 
planets therein”. This is the first case cited NED, and Hawes, Pastime of Pleasure, is the 
second. See Dance Macabre 292. 

root... ascendent. The root or radix, in astrology, was the basis of any calculation, 
perhaps a nativity, perhaps the position of a planet. See Chaucer’s Astrolabe ii § 44, MLTale 
314. The ascendent was that part of the ecliptic which was at any time rising above the 
horizon. See the Astrolabe ii § 3, lines 23-24, and especially § 4. With this line cp. Lydgate’s 
Thebes 370, “The root ytaken at the ascendent”. 

south is miswritten for souht. 

303. Dante in inglissh / hym silff so doth expresse. This line has occasioned much discus- 
sion, which it may be convenient to restate in two sections,—opinion as to the first half of 
the line and opinion as to the latter half. Prof. Skeat, Oxford Chaucer i:22-25, comments 
only on the first half, which he considers as referring to the Hous of Fame. His reasons 
are that Lydgate would certainly mention that work, and would naturally mention it in con- 
nection with the Death of Blanche the Duchess, as Chaucer had in the Legend, line 418 of 
the prologue. Still stronger, indeed conclusive to Skeat’s mind, is the influence of Dante 
upon the Hous of Fame, of which he considers that Lydgate is thinking when he applies this 
name to the poem. Of the second half of the line Skeat says only that it is “rather dubious” ; 
he paraphrases—‘“‘Chaucer expresses himself (therein) like Dante.” 

MacCracken, in the N.Y.Nation for 1909, ii:276-77, offers a solution which like Skeat’s 
emphasizes mainly the first half of the line. But he argues, and justly, that Lydgate is 
not capable of any such critical dictum, such implied comparison of poems so different in 
form and tone as are the Divina Commedia and the Hous of Fame; the more incapable be- 
cause Lydgate’s knowledge of Dante was very slight. MacCracken’s suggestion is that as 
the next two poems in this list, Ceys and Alcyone and the Death of Blanche, are “piteous”, 
Lydgate introduces them by saying that Chaucer therein writes as Dante, author of the 
“piteous” story of Ugolino, would express himself in English. On this theory, the Hous 
of Fame is not mentioned by Lydgate; which need not surprise us in so careless a workman. 

Both Skeat and MacCracken, in their paraphrases and comments, treat the second half 
of the line as meaning “expresses himself”, as reflexive. I have however pointed out, Anglia 
36 :375-6, that the NED has no case of express in reflexive usage before Shakespeare, 
and that, as himself has in all periods of the language served as a nominative, this half-line 
must be paraphrased “he himself says so”. (Compare in this connection Thebes 2442, “—hyr- 
silf in ordre did expresse”.) This being so, then he must mean Chaucer; and any interpre- 


442 NOTES [PAGE 161 


tation of the first half of the line must be shaped by this fact. Should we take Dante in 
inglissh as referring to the story of Ugolino, in the Monk’s Tale, and point both to the 
separate mentions of Melibeus, of Griselda, of the Monk’s Tale, in lines 249, 346-350, and to 
Chaucer’s own naming of Dante as he ends the Ugolino-story, we should still have to recognize 
that Lydgate’s telling of the Pisan tragedy, FaPrinces ix:2051-55, makes no mention of 
Chaucer, and is dismissed with five lines. The tale which in this Prologue the monk singled 
out and described in accordance with Chaucer’s own reference to Dante as its author, he 
would, on this explanation, have totally forgotten when he arrived at the ninth book of his 
translation. This is perhaps not impossible for Lydgate; it is not impossible that he noticed 
Chaucer’s mention of Dante more than he did the heading of that particular tragedy in the 
Monk’s tale. But the first half of the line remains “dubious”, rather than the second, 
which is linguistically clear. On the line see Brusendorff, p. 151. 

It may be added that in the many scores of usages of expresse by Lydgate, with 
whom the word is a favorite, I have noted no case of the reflexive; nor in any writer of 
this period. The phrasing “as he seith hymselue’, FaPrinces vi:3170, may be compared here. 
In these extracts it is G 223. 

304. ciex and alcione. This story forms part of the Boke of the Duchesse, and is 
separately mentioned ML headlink 57. It may once have been an independent poem. 

314. See Parl. of Foules 540. 

318. This translation is not now known to exist. 

319. of the leoun. Mentioned in the Retractation to the Canterbury Tales, but not now 
known. Perhaps, as Tyrwhitt suggested, a translation of Machaut’s Dit du Lion. 

321-3. “The Broche of Thebes” is the title of the Complaint of Mars in MS Harley 
7333; see my Manual, p. 384.—Note the stanza-liaison. 

324. Ouyde. Lydgate is in error. It is Statius who mentions the fatal brooch, or rather 
bracelet, so desired of Theban women, in his Thebais ii1:265. Chaucer, in his Mars 245-260, 
extends the maleficent effect to men, and Lydgate follows him. 

330. at requeste of the quene. Lydgate may be recalling incorrectly the close of the pro- 
logue to Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, where Love bids the poet give the queen his 
book, when finished, ‘fat Eltham or at Shene”. This passage is not in the Cambridge Gg text 
of the prologue. 

330-36. This passage is used in the Schole-House of Women, ed. Hazlitt, EEPopPoetry 
iv :141-2. 

331. The Legend of Good Women. 

332. bounte & fairnesse. See note on Bycorne 88. 

334-36. This is what Skeat would call “a waggish comment” by Lydgate. The words 
And for in 334 oblige us to read a comma at end of 336, and make Lydgate say that Chaucer 
turned to the Canterbury Tales because he could not complete the Legend as commanded. 
This is doubtful. 

345. sentence, sense, substance. See 448 below, Chaucer’s Prologue 306, 800, NPTale 
345, Troilus iii:1327, etc. 

342-5. See Lydgate’s prologue to Thebes, 22-23. 

346. The story of Melibeus, from the Cant.Tales—348. The Clerk’s Tale. 

350. The Monk’s Tale. 

353. virrelaies, virelays. A virelay was a poem in strophes, on two rimes, the last 
rime of each strophe becoming the first rime of the next strophe; e.g., aab aab aab bcc, etc. 

365-8. In Higden’s Polychronicon iii cap. 42 (Rolls Series ed.) we find :—“Auditorium 
Tullii Caesar intravit. Cui cum assurgeret Tullius, Caesar prohibuit, dicens ‘Non assurgas mihi, 
maior est enim sapientia quam potentia.’ Cui Tullius: ‘Orbis victori non assurgam?’ Et Caesar, 
‘Et tu maiorem lauream adeptus es quam propagare terminos Romani imperii.’ Cuius verbi 
occasione lex a Caesare emanavit ut nemo codicem tenens aut legens cuiquam assurgat.” 

375-6. As pointed out Anglia 38:135-6, this allusion, with line 406, enables us to date 
the prologue of the Fall of Princes. Koeppel, interpreting the phrase “which is now in 
fraunce” to mean Gloucester, connected it with the duke’s 1424-5 campaign in Flanders. 


PAGE 162] FALL OF PRINCES: A 443 


But from the next line we learn that Gloucester at time of writing was “lieftenant” of 
Britain; to fill this office he must be in England. And as the phrase “which is now in fraunce” 
could in Lydgate’s syntax equally well apply to Henry VI, whose absence in France would 
compel the appointment of a lieutenant, it is clear that Henry was out of England and 
Gloucester acting as lieutenant, when Lydgate wrote these lines. This was noted by Schick, 
Temple of Glass, introd. p. cv. The date would then be between April 1430 and January 1432; 
Schick fixes on 1430,—but see note on 406 below.—Observe stanza-liaison 378-9, 385-6. 

387. commune, converse. This word was used in the late MidEng period alongside the 
more frequent common, which it ultimately displaced. 

389. contune. This variant on continue, of obscure formation, occurs three times in 
the Romaunt of the Rose, is frequent in Lydgate and in Bokenam, and goes no further. Its 
presence in “fragment B” of the Romaunt is with some scholars an argument for Lydgate’s 
authorship of that part of the translation. The word occurs in Lover’s Mass 13. 

391-2. And wher he loueth, etc. These lines may be conventional praise of Gloucester 
for a virtue highly commended by medieval poets, although quite foreign to the duke’s tempera- 
ment; they may be an allusion to Gloucester’s motto, “Loyalle et belle”; and they may hint 
at the circumstances of the moment. Gloucester, after a passionate and ill-advised marriage 
with Jacqueline of Holland in 1424, had forsaken her, and had caused public scandal by his 
connection with Eleanor Cobham. When the earlier union was annulled, he made Eleanor his 
duchess, some time between 1428 and 1431. Lydgate, who is now probably writing in 1431, 
had written not only an Epithalamium for the marriage with Jacqueline (see p. 144 above), 
but ? a lament over Gloucester’s desertion of her and infatuation with Eleanor, an infatuation 
piously attributed to witchcraft. (See text of the poem in Anglia 27 :393 ff.) We may query 
if the second marriage was recent when Lydgate wrote this passage, if he is here justifying 
Gloucester, by his phrase “without cause”, for the rejection of Jacqueline. 

398. hym silff to ocupie. This reflexive use of occupy is earlier than the NED citations 
of 1555, 1604. Cp. note on 303 ante. 

406 ff. To punysshe alle tho, etc. A yet closer approximation to the date of this Pro- 
logue may be obtained from these lines. In the spring of 1431 there were various outbreaks 
of Lollardy in the south of England, all of which were rigorously put down by Gloucester’s 
government, acting in the king’s absence, and he himself was present at the beheading, at 
Oxford, of a small band of recalcitrants led by the bailiff of Abingdon. This was in May, 
1431. As a matter of politics, Gloucester made much of his loyalty to the Church, and 
Lydgate is very probably referring to this occasion. The date of the Prologue would then 
be between May 1431 and the New Year of 1432, when Henry VI returned from France and 
Gloucester’s lieutenancy ended. See other allusions to these outbreaks in the Palladius-pro- 
logue line 51, and cp. note on that passage. 

409. synglar, singular. This word has usually in Lydgate the force of “especial, particu- 
lar”; but the phrase ‘‘synguler bataile”, as in FaPrinces i:5455, etc., means “single combat” ; 
and in a number of cases the word means “personal, individual”, e.g., FaPrinces iii:1249, etc. 

431. Cp. the management of line 454. 

456. Ditees of murnyng, etc. Cp. lines 24-5 above. 

459. in noumbre thries thre. A formula for rime; see note on line 182 of the Epitha- 
amium above. See also FaPrinces i:3758, i1:3237, Kingis Quair, stanza 19, 

464-5. The verb-forms are confused and confusing. To hynder is equivalent to “hindering”. 

465. Hauyng is to be parsed with the me of line 463. 

466. To the tragedies, i.e., “for the tragedies”. 


FALL OF PRINCES : B 


1. abrayde, start up. The Old Eng. transitive vb. abregdan was in Mid. Eng. intransi- 
tive, one of its senses being “‘to break into motion or speech”. It is frequent in Lydgate, more 
so than in Chaucer; see G 174 here, and Churl 83. 

6. The text of the Carnegie ed. reads “be will were so disposid”. The meaning 
apparently is “were so shaped by our inclinations”. Cp. the various readings wel, wil, in 


444 NOTES [PAGE 166 


Chaucer’s PoFoules 214, and the possible confusion between Voluptas the daughter of Cupid 
and Voluntas, “will”, as Chaucer or his scribe may have misread Boccaccio, 

4-18. As remarked in the introd. above, Lydgate here dilutes Gower’s balanced “oppo- 
sites”. 

22-25. A characteristic Lydgatian repetition. 

33-35. See Ovid’s Heroides xi:124, Gower iii:293-4. This is a stock idea; see Shakes- 
peare’s Winter’s Tale iii:2, 236. With line 34 cp. Lydgate’s Troy Book i:892, 

45 ff. Lydgate’s tenderness for an innocent helpless child is also expressed i:3219-20, 
3236, 4022, i11:3135—“‘with lippis tendre & softe’,—ii:3143,—“In childli wise on hir gan to 
smyle”,—iv :3929, viii:1187. 

49. the goodly ffayre. With the substantival use of the singular adjective cp. lusty 
in Troilus iii:354, fre in FlCourtesy 222, Compl. to his Lady 104. 

50. A mouth he hath, etc. This expression, here highly pathetic, occurs several times 
in Lydgate. In the Troy Book iii:4178 it is said, of Troilus grieving over Cressida, that 
“He had a moube but wordis had he noon”. Jn TemGlas Compl. 49 the lover says “A tunge 
I haue but wordys none”. In ResonandSens 6268, FaPrin i:4742, similar phrases are used 
sardonically of women in general, and in St. Albon ii:401-2, 1398 ff., the eyes, ears, and arms 
of idols are so described. Cp. “Anon he lost be offys of spekyng”’, Troy Book iii:5530. 
Donne, in his Progress of the Soul, writes “A mouth, but dumb, he hath’’, 

For the different color taken by a line in its different contexts cp. Chaucer’s use of 
“Allone withouten any companye” in KnTale 1921 and in MillTale 18; see note on Charles 
of Orléans xvi:20 here. 

60. A favorite line with Lydgate. See ii:2918, vi:807 of the FaPrinces, also Troy 
Book ii:4248, iv :4383, v:1563. 

59-63. An example of Lydgate’s real feeling and muddled expression. The arbitrary 
omission of the auxiliary or of the subject of the verb, the use of the ablative absolute, the 
forcing of participles to function as finite verbs, are constant weaknesses with him. One 
might suggest emending considred to considre in line 62; but the construction as it stands 
is common enough in Lydgate. 

With line 62, ‘‘lyppes soffte as sylk,”’ cp. FaPrin ii:3135. For the simile cp. St. Margaret 
416, ResonandSens 1643, TemGlas 540, PilgrMan 24446,—each case riming with milk. 

64-65. Cp. Jeremiah, Lament. i:12, “O vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite et 
videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus.” In Aeschylus’ Promethus, Io cries “Who of the com- 
pany of the unfortunate endure sufferings such as mine?” (Smyth’s trans.) Cp .Ovid, Metam. 
iii :442,—“ecquis, io silvae, crudelius, inquit, amavit?” And Dante, Inferno 28:132, “vedi se 
alcuna (pena) é grande come questa.” The same thing is said by Brunhilde in FaPrinces 
ix :473-4. 

65. comparable. This word and incomparable, neither cited NED anterior to Lydgate, 
are used by him, especially the latter, in rime a number of times. 

70. corage. For note on this word, see B 62 of Walton’s Boethius here. 

81. be lady, etc. Bergen’s text reads be lord & souereyne. 

82. at me so dysdeyne. This locution is more frequent in Mid. Eng. than that of line 139 
below, now the standard. 

95. To Virgil, Aeneid vi:173-197, Fame is a messenger oftener of evil than of good, 
“tam ficti pravique tenax quam nuntia veri’. To Ovid she is “Fama loquax”, a disseminator 
of falsehood; but the description of her palace in Metam. xii:39-63 stirred the imagination 
of later poets. Both Petrarch in the Trionfo della Fama and the Amorosa Visione, and 
Chaucer in the third book of his Hous of Fame, dwell upon her powers and her abode, treat- 
ing her less as messenger than as divinity. Lydgate, FaPrinces i:5111, vi:109-119, speaks of 
Fame’s two trumpets, a detail he could get from Chaucer. The golden, or favorable, trumpet, 
is mentioned FaPrinces i1:3013, vi:3093, ix :3468, the other trumpet i1:5117 and vii:418. The 
swiftness of evil Fame Lydgate mentions here and in FaPrinces iv:2373; the palace or house 
of Fame is named ibid. iii:2352, iv:122, v:420, vi:514, viii:26, 2735, Troy Book iii:4254, 
Epithal. 133. The table of Fame is alluded to in FaPrinces iv:999. See Hawes 136, Caven- 
dish 1222. 


PAGE 167] FALL OF PRINCES: B 445 


99. Cp. Barclay’s Eclogue iv :1043. 

101-2. “There is no way to mitigate these slanderous reports for our exculpation, unless 
Cupid be blamed.” 

106 ff. This digression is at first sight tasteless and no more. But inept as it is, it 
endeavors at a reasoning-out of circumstance such as Chaucer seeks in Troilus’ long musing on 
predestination, iv :960-1078, or such as he puts into Cressida’s mouth, iii:813-40. And “Cupid”, 
to us so insipid, represents the force of Love, over which clerks and chevaliers argued scholas- 
tically. Lydgate’s expression is weak enough, but he is following code. 

108. mesour, moderation, ‘“mensura”, the golden mean of rhetorical as well as of moral 
code. See note on “reason”, line 110 below, and see MLReview 21 :380-4 on “The Conception 
of Mesure in some Medieval Poets”. Cp. moderatio in the de Vinsauf passage cited in note 
on G 193 below. 

110. reson. This word meant not only “a comment, a word, an argument”, as in Fa- 
Princes G 117 or Garl. 10, but also a systematic arrangement, the principle of such order, a 
scheme of “mesure”. The latter, a technical term of rhetoric, is thus used by Chaucer, 
CTprol 37, Troilus iii:1408-9, HoFame 707-8, etc.; and when so used, it is similar to the 
phrase by ordre, cp. notes on Shirley 1:26 and on Roundel 3 here. For reson in this sense 
see MLReview 21 :13-18. 

112. Supply he before yiveth. 

115. arke, the part of a circle which a heavenly body appears to pass through, either 
above the horizon (diurnal) or below it (nocturnal). See MerchTale 551. 

117. lures. See note Dance Macabre 207. 

127-8. See Chaucer’s Troilus iv :798. 

130. Vnto ... ward. See FaPrinces ix:1806, Hoccleve EETS ed. i:50 line 44, Dial. 
469, Jonathas 65; see Lydgate’s DuorMercat. 791, St. Margaret 90, etc., for this idiom. 

143-4. Ovid, Petrarch, Gower, are all particular about this picture of Canace, who has 
her pen in her right hand, the sword in her left. According to Ovid, Heroides xi:89-90, the 
child has already been taken away; according to Gower and to Lydgate, it is in its mother’s 
“barm”’. I cannot cite the word barm from Lydgate elsewhere, and the NED does not 
cite it between A. D. 950 and Douglas (1513). It is in Chaucer’s MoTale 76, 450, SqTale 
631, ClTale 495. 

154. save: bathe. Lydgate has a number of cases of assonance. The TemGlass has 
three, 125-6, 858-9, 1017-18; the Black Knight has three, 274-6, 284-5, 460-1; Thebes has one, 
1247-8; the DuorMercat has two, 202-3 and 293-4. I have noted at least fifteen in the Troy 
Book, mainly on p and k, but have not observed others in that poem. Chaucer has but one 
clear case of assonance, Troilus 11:884-6; that in BoDuch 79-80 is susceptible of explanation. 
—the silff, itself, i.e., Canace’s very blood. 


FALL OF PRINCES ; € 


2. Compare Dante, Inferno 26:118, “Considerate la vostra semenza”,—though said in a 
very different spirit. 

3. discencioun. The quarrel between Romulus and Remus. See FaPrinces ii:4072 ff. 

16. triumphe usurpyng. Caesar’s demand for a triumphal entry and honors, on his re- 
turn from Britain and Gaul, was refused by Pompey and the Senate from fear of Caesar’s 
waxing power; civil war followed. The matter of the Roman triumph was very interesting 
to Lydgate; he goes into particulars in book iv, lines 519 ff., and still more fully in ?his prose 
Serpent of Division, which narrates the Caesar-Pompey quarrel. He also discusses “crowns” 
in FaPrinces iv :239 ff. The word usurp is occasionally employed by Lydgate in the sense of 
“claim,” as here. See FaPrinces i:5669-70, ii:2719-20, iv :1228-29. 

18. serious. This word, frequent here and in the Troy Book, is explained by Skeat, 
note on MLTale 87, as “minutely, with full details”. It can have the force of “in sequence, 
serially”. See Thebes 333, “Cereously be lyneal discent”. 

19, Octavyan. Octavianus Augustus, Caesar’s nephew and successor. 


446 NOTES [PAGE 172 


20. Wher is become, i. e., “What is become of?’ See Libel 36, Garland of Laurell 1216. 

21. After this line there is inserted in Dr, Bergen’s edition of the poem a stanza found 
only in the 1554 print and in one MS. I have not included it, and the numbering of this 
text is not correspondent with Bergen’s beyond this point. 

22. cheef lanterne. This term, or “light”, is used by medieval writers to imply super- 
excellence in the person described, or to assert that he guides lesser men as does one bearing 
a lantern. Laurent’s French prose, Lydgate’s principal source, speaks elsewhere of Hector 
as “lumiére de prouesse et de chevalerie”; Athens is “lIumiére de philosophie”, and “lumi- 
ére de Gréce”, in the same way that Cicero calls Rome “lux orbis terrarum”’. When Dante 
addresses Virgil, Inferno 1:82, as “degli altri poeti onore e lume”, he is probably thinking 
in the second of these senses, as was the Psalmist in 119:105, which Wyclif translates “Lan- 
terne to my feet thy word and light to myn pathe’”. Cp, Dante in Purgat. 1:43, 22:67, fol- 
lowing Seneca or Ennius; and Chaucer, Legend 926, following Dante. 

27. declyne. Trajan would not ‘‘decline on’,—lean toward, favor,—any party. 

29-35. The Middle Ages regarded Virgil not only as a poet and philosopher, but as a 
beneficient magician; see Comparetti’s Vergil in the Middle Ages. The story here told was 
long current without Virgil’s name as the worker of the wonder, e. g. in Jacobus de Voragine’s 
Legenda Aurea cap. clvii, earlier in the Mirabilia Urbis Romae of ca. 1150, and earlier yet 
in a MS of the 8th century cited by Keller, Li Roman de Sept Sages, 1836, p. ccvii. In the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries this marvel, with others, was ascribed to Virgil; in chap. 
clxxiv of Alexander Neckam’s De Naturis Rerum, late 12th century, we are told that Virgil 
constructed at Rome a palace in which were statues representing the subject provinces of 
the Empire, each statue bearing a bell which rang if that province meditated revolt. Vincent 
de Beauvais has the same story in his Speculum Historiale (before 1264) at the opening 
of his discussion of Virgil, book vi, chap. 61; and in the Polychronicon of Higden, trans- 
lated by Trevisa, this building is more than once mentioned. In the Rolls Series ed. of 
Trevisa, i:217-19, the building is described, but attributed to witchcraft; in iv:243-45 Virgil 
is named as its builder, and Neckam as source of the fact. Laurent repeats the legend, see 
FaPrinces ix :20 ff. He does not mention Virgil as the builder, but says that the emperor 
Phocas gave to Boniface, “le quart pape depuis sainct Gregoire’, this “pantheum”, which 
he describes, and recounts how Boniface dismantled it and consecrated it to Our Lady and 
all the saints. Lydgate, at that point in his translation, says nothing about Virgil, as Laurent 
had not; he muddles the names of Gregory and Boniface, and refers to “poetis and Fulgence” 
for the story of the statues. I do not find anything about the “pantheon” in Fulgentius; Lau- 
rent in his rendering fuses, as do some earlier writers, the image-filled “Salvatio Romae” and 
the pagan temple hallowed by Boniface. 

44. This MS and Royal 18 D v omit the word enrichyng at the end of the line; I sup- 
ply it from Harley 1245. In Bergen’s edition there is a typographical error in the order 
of words. 

69. thordris nyne. The nine grades of angels, viz., Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Domin- 
ions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, Angels. So Dante, Paradiso 28:98 ff., fol- 
lowing Dionysius’ De Caeleste Hierarchia. See FaPrinces ix :2399 ff. 

74. wordli. An exceedingly frequent MS-spelling for worldly. 

76. bowe ... chyne, bow thy shin, kneel. One might consider that in FaPrinces iii :2594, 
viii :497, this word meant chin. In iv:3637, “Tascende the mounteyn feeble wer ther chynes”, 
the meaning is clear. Cp. iii:3132, iv:2536, vii:442, viii:995, 2091; Troy Book i:3066. 

85. Cast up, ie., Consider. See Thebes 1687, Troy Book iv:4959. With this passage 
cp. Lydgate’s St. Albon ii:1745-61. 

88. Now briht, etc. The balance of “opposites” by the word Now is a device Chaucer 
and Lydgate could find, e.g., in the Romaunt of the Rose, 6327 ff. Chaucer uses it briefly 

- and colloquially in KnTale 674-7; Lydgate has it, in this poem, ii:4554, iii:1321, 4337, iv :623, 
1987, v :439, and especially in the description of Fortune vi:55-69, 169-71, 192-4. 

93. Cirenes. Lydgate’s allusions to sirens are frequent. See this poem i:5157, ii:658, 
4245-9, iii:1637, 3708, 4610, vi:69-70, etc.; cp. his ResonandSens 1772-5, 4098, 5257, 6732; 
cp. Troy Book v:2054 ff., Letter to My Lady of Gloucester stanza 10. He could get his 


PAGE 173] Abi, OF PRINCES? € 447 


material from Isidor’s Etymologies xi:3, 30, or from Hugh of St. Victor, De Bestiis et 
Aliis Rebus, ii cap. 32; or he could find a brief account in another part of Laurent’s French, 
book i chap. 18. 

96. Synderesis, or Synteresis, Aquinas’ term for conscience as applied to human con- 
duct. In his translation of Deguilleville’s Pilgrimage, 4963 ff., Lydgate gives a definition 
of synderesis as “the hiher party of Resoun”’. Hoccleve uses the same source, see EETS 
ed. iii p. xxv, line 76. In the Assembly of Gods, 937 ff., Synderesis aids Conscience, the judge 
of the combat between Virtues and Vices. Milton in his Commonplace Book copies a defini- 
tion of Synderesis as a “natural power of the soul, set in the highest part thereof, moving 
and striving it to good, and abhorring evil. And therefore Sindrisis never sinns nor erres. 
And this Sindirisis the Lord put in man to the intent that the order of things should be 
observed.” 

Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum Historiale i cap 40, has “Sinderesis est scintilla conscientie 
in speculamentis constituta, cuius est peccato remurmurare & errata corrigere. & hec est 
que movet liberum arbitrium in bonum commune, et retrahit a malo communi” etc. He says 
it is extinct in the devil and in the damned, but not in Jews, nor quite so in heresiarchs. 


FALL OF PRINCES : D 


8. I meene as thus. Such an explanation by a writer of his own words, scholastic in 
its origin, is very frequent in Chaucer, for example; and the usage is continued by his fol- 
lowers. See for instance the Kingis Quair, stanzas 72, 78, 79, 123, 129, 184. It was much 
used by Chaucer in his Boethius-translation, when he was incorporating glosses to make the 
text clearer to his readers. And Dante’s use of dico, although generally a mode of emphasis 
or of filliping the attention, is sometimes directly parallel to Chaucer’s “This is to meene”; 
cp. Inferno 4:66, “la selva, dico, di spiriti spessi’. And note ibid., 14:7-8. 

A similar turn of words is employed by Chaucer in a way which to a modern ear sounds 
mischievous. In Troilus ii:904-5 he says :— 


The dayes honour and the hevenes ye 
The nightes fo (al this clepe I the sonne)— 


and, with a fuller formula, FranklTale 289-90, 


For th’ orisonte hath reft the sonne his light 
This is as much to seye as it was night. 


But if this latter is in intent a burlesque, what of the parallel passage in Fulgentius’ Mitolo- 
giarum, bk. i? After protracted and somewhat turgid description of night, in verse, Fulgen- 
tius says: “ut, in verba paucissima conferam, nox erat.’ This particular Chaucerian passage 
took effect on his followers; cp. the Kingis Quair stanza 72, “This is to say, approche gan 
the nyght”,—and Lydgate’s Troy Book iv :3582-3 :— 


And Espirus gan his ligte to shede 
pis to seyn, for it drowe to nygt,— 


also, ibid., iv :629, “pis to seyne be sonne went doun”. See also ibid., iii:15, 2749. 

It is doubtful if either King James or Lydgate read humorous intent into the Chaucerian 
phrase which was serving as their model. But Lowell, in his essay on Chaucer, says of the 
FranklTale passage that the poet “turns round upon himself and smiles at a trip he has made 
into fine writing”; and Mackail, in his Springs of Helicon, p. 59, remarks of it: “It may be 
suspected that Chaucer is making fun of Dante’. On this point note Matthew of Venddéme’s 
““it sit sensus ‘jam diescebat’ ”,—after a citation of Aeneid iv:584. See Faral, p. 185. 

Other passages in which Chaucer’s “I seye” is parallel to Dante’s scholastic dico are 
MLTale 162-3, ClerkTale 410 ff., FranklTale 337-40; in the two latter he repeats himself 
emphatically. The locution is very common in Lydgate, usually in the form as here; it is 
more frequent as explanation than as emphasis, and often seems merely padding. 

8-21. For this apology see note on Walton A 58. Calliope, the muse of epic poetry and 
eloquence, and Clio the muse of history, are frequently mentioned together by Lydgate; see 


448 NOTES [PAGE 174 


Thebes 831, Epithal. 181, Troy Book prol. 40, 46, ii1:5445, Life of Our Lady as cited by 
Schick TemGlas note on 958. 

10. rethorik ... floure. The term flowers was often used by medieval writers for the 
adornments of rhetoric, beside the term colours. Both are found in Cicero, ep. De Oratore 
iii:25, where he says that oratio is adorned quasi colore quodam and quasi verborum senten- 
tiarumique floribus. 

12. in noumbre thries thre. For note on this rime-tag see FaPrinces A 459, Epithal. 182. 

16. Pegase. In Greek mythology, the spring Hippocrene, upon Helicon, was opened by 
the thrust of Pegasus’ hoof. Fulgentius says merely “Musarum fontem ungula sua rupisse 
fertur”,—without connecting the kick of Pegasus, as fuller myth does, with the song-contest 
of the Pierides and the Muses, the rising of Helicon in rapture while the Muses sang and 
Jupiter’s command to Pegasus to thrust the mountain back. An almost identical line is in 
Troy Book i prol. 45. 

19. tame ther tunnys. The word tame is a shortened form of attame, frequently used 
by Lydgate in its sense of “to broach, to open as a cask is opened’. It seems to have here 
the force of “to sample’. Cp. “Who that wil entren to tamen of the sweete”’, DuobMercat. 
701. 

20-21. poliphemus ...Argus. Argus had many eyes, Polyphemus but one. In this 
poem ix :3335 Lydgate says of himself ““Myn eyen mystyd and dirked my spectacle’. Possibly 
he, like Hoccleve and Bokenam, had weak or overworked eyes; see Bokenam p. 23, line 
657-8, Hoccleve to Oldcastle 417-20, and to the duke of York 57-59. 

22-23. Our life here short, etc. Cp. the line-movement of the opening of Chaucer’s 
PoFoules. Cp. for the wording the prologue of John of Salisbury to his Polycraticus, 
bk. i:—‘‘Siquidem vita brevis, sensus herbes, negligentia torpor, inutilis occupatio, nos paucula 
scire permittunt: et eadem iugiter excutit, et avellit ab animo fraudatrix scientiae, inimica 
et infida semper memoriae noverca, oblivio.” The use of the last phrase in line 30 below makes 
it probable that Lydgate has the Polycraticus in mind rather than a more general observation 
like that of Vincent of Beauvais in his Speculum Naturale :—“Quoniam multitudo librorum 
et temporis brevitas memorie quoque labilitas non patiuntur cuncta que scripta sunt pariter 
animo comprehendi—’’etc. 

30. stepmodir. John of Salisbury’s phrase, as above. The metaphorical use of noverca 
is very common in the latter Middle Ages. Fulgentius and Matthew of Vendome, especially 
the latter, employ it frequently. Vendome in his Tobias, 2123-4, says: “Vocum congeries 
prolixa noverca favoris Displicet, excurrit, labitur, auris abest’”; and Bokenam in his St. 
Margaret 941-3 speaks of prolixity as “Stepdame of fauour aftyr the sentence. In a vers 
of Mathu Vindocinence”’—referring obviously to the passage just cited. Lydgate, FaPrinces 
iv:150-51, calls idleness the stepmother of science and cunning; ibid., i:4811 hasty credence 
is the stepmother of good counsel; ibid., i1:643 flattery is stepmother to virtue; and so in 
111:3980 of Will and Wit, in v:3045-7 of Covetousness and Worthiness. Cp. also PilgLifeMan 
15985-7, Secrees 665. The metaphor in Matthew of Vendome occurs, e. g., Tobias 193-4, 
811-12, Ars Versificatoria end of part i and passim there; see Faral, pp. 118, 163, etc. 

36. were, i.e., doubt, perplexity. 

38. The punctuation in the Carnegie edition is erroneous, The phrase “who euer list 
to lere” is one of Lydgate’s lumps of padding, is parenthetical, and should be set off by 
commas. 

41. with a maas, i. e., with mace, or the staff carried by a sheriff's officer, by one who 
makes an arrest. 

46. felt quake. The quaking hand or pen is a favorite mode with Lydgate of asserting 
his inadequacy for his task. Chaucer had used the locution, Troilus iv:13-14, and it is 
found, e.g., in Lydgate’s BlKnight 181, TemGlas 947, St. Marg. 57, St. Edmund iii:89, 
AlbonandAmph. i:928, LettGlouc 4, Troy Book i:4427, ii1:145, iii:5425, v:1044, Secrees 334, 
1555, FaPrinces i:5517, 7023, ii:1022, iii :3684, iv :3495, v:2133, vi:2989, ix :3307. See Hawes, 
Example of Vertu stanza 112, Skelton’s GarlLaurell 812. 

52. stood chek maate, was nonplussed, helpless. This also is a favorite locution with 
Lydgate. It appears in Chaucer’s Troilus ii:754 as “say chekmate”’, ie., force to a halt, to 


PAGE 175] FALL OF PRINCES: D 449 


submission; see BoDuch 659-60. See Hoccleve’s Lerne to Dye 181; sea Dance 459, Caven- 
dish 161. 

63. Pierides & Meduse. Lydgate has said that the Muses show him no favor; he now 
says that only to the unworthy rivals of the Muses, those daughters of Pierus who attempted 
to assert their own supremacy in song, and to stony Medusa, can he look for aid. 

66. Mercurie. ..and Philologie. Mercury and Philology are referred to together in 
TemGlas 129, where the allusion is to their marriage as described by Martianus Capella in 
one of the widely read books of the Middle Ages. The names also appear together Epithal- 
Glouc. 179-80 with reference to their marriage, which is described by Lydgate Thebes 833-44. 
Here the two are rather thought of as presiding over eloquence, the special province of Mer- 
cury, as Lydgate says ResonandSens 1657 ff., Troy Book ii:2499-2501, 5605-8, FaPrinces 
11:4544-5. See St. Edmund i:99-101. 

69. ebb. A frequent metaphor with Lydgate; see this poem i:4422-24, 6079, iii :355-58, 
ix 3348-51, Troy Book ii:456, LettGlouc 20. 

67-9. With these lines cp. LettGlouc 20-24. 

78. ertheli. Warley 1245 reads hertely. 

82. The bracketed phrase is from MS Harley 1245; our MS by error repeats from 79 
as “list nat to aduertise”. 

83. to greue. Harley 1245, or greve. 

92. Translation of Laurent now begins. In the French there is no distinct prologue 
to this Book; the introductory simile (in the printed ed. here used) runs without break into 
the dispute of Fortune and Poverty which follows. In Boccaccio’s Latin, however, the 
eleven-line prologue is set off separately, and its first half is, as printed in Paris n. d. by 
Jehan Petit :—‘“Consverere longum ac laboriosvm iter agentes / non solum aliquando con- 
sistere /sudores abstergere / corpus leuare / auram captare lenem / & sitim poculis pellere: 
Set etiam in tergum facie versa / iam acta metiri spatia / opida recolere / flumina / montes 
/ vallesque / & aequora / recensere. Et dum toti itineri quod preteritum est / eximunt: 
Non modicum sibi / ad laboris residuum / virium superaddere.” Laurent renders this :— 
“Pelerins & autres voyageurs qui font aucun long & labourieux chemin ont de coustume soy 
arrester / & aucunesfois torcher la sueur de leur visage / et la lautre fois mettre ius leurs 
fardeaulx pour aleger le corps & autrefois prendre le vent fres et souef / et boire ou vin 
ou eaue pour oster la soif & si ont de coustume de veoir & abater combien ils ont fait apres 
ce quilz ont tourne le dos a aucun notable lieu dont ils se sont partis / ils recordent entre 
eulx le nombre et les noms des chasteaulx / des riuieres / des valles / des montaignes 
/ et des mers que ils ont passees / & quant ils rabatent de tout leur chemin ce qui en 
est fait ils prennent en leurs cueurs forces et allegences plus quilz nen auoient pour acomplir 
le remanant du labour & du chemin.” (From the Petit print, Paris 1538).—With this 
pilgrim-simile cp. the Lover’s Mass, Epistle in prose, p. 212 here; and see p. 209 here. 


FALL OF PRINCES : E 


In this extract Lydgate is very prone to the absolute treatment of participles and to the 
omission of the verb-subject; cp. lines 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 27, 31, 50, 53, 70, 76, 90, 103. 

11. Germanye. The Bergen ed. reads Lumbardie. 

13. peisid...seyn. An ablative absolute. “This matter having been examined and 
weighed’’,—nevertheless Caesar had no guerdon, no triumph. 

16. appesid, were appeased. Laurent says: “appaisa les discentions civiles’”. 

17. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, vi., cap. 37, “De initio imperii Cesaris”, 
gives Sichardus as his authority for the statement: “Denique Cesar Romam reuersus rerum 
summam ac potentiam quam Greci monarchiam vocant solus sibi presumpsit.” Lydgate makes 
no use of Laurent’s repeated emphasis on the graciousness and leniency of Caesar as compared 
with other despots. 

18. sxiiine regiouns. Rome was divided into fourteen regions, Italy into eleven. This 
may be a miswriting for xiiiine. 

19-21. The refusal of the triumph to Caesar is again mentioned. 


450 NOTES [pace 178 


20. recure. See note Dance Macabre 311. Our MS erroneously reads replye, under 
influence probably of the rime-word. 

21. Other MSS request instead of conquest. 

25. doomys.. .dresse, administer judgments. 

37. Cp. similar line Knight’s Tale 152. 

42. parody. This word, probably a reshaping of French période, “duration”, was used by 
Chaucer, Troilus v:1548, to mean “term of life’. Lydgate employs it four times in this poem, 
twice in the Troy Book, and elsewhere; but it was not longer preserved in English. The 1554 
print of the Fall of Princes renders the word here as periody; and the scribe of Harley 2251, 
copying a poem which is printed Halliwell MinPo, p. 126, changes it to paradice. 

43. Tongilyus. Lydgate’s source for this bit of information is perhaps the same as 
that of the De Nugis Curialium, or rather of the Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum which is in- 
corporated in the fourth Distinction of the De Nugis, and which had a large circulation 
as a separate work, being sometimes attributed to St. Jerome. Walter Map mentions the 
story merely to urge on his correspondent that however humble the source of advice, it 
should be heeded lest worse follow. See p. 146 of the ed. by Wright, p. 149 of the ed. by 
M. R. James. The same name is given to the warner of Caesar in the Serpent of Division, 
see ibid., p. 64; and the phrase of introduction is there identical, ‘a pore man called Ton- 
gilius’. Map says “Tongillo humili quidem sed divino”, making Tongillus a soothsayer ; 
Laurent says that “vne sedulle’ was offered Caesar, mentioning no name for its bearer. 

48. ambicious necligence. The “necligence”’, Caesar’s delay to read the warning scroll, 
is deplored by both Laurent and the author of the Serpent of Division. Laurent says that 
Caesar was “trop tardif”, and that the tragic outcome should teach all to be prompt in opening 
and reading their letters. 

50. consistory. This word was used in the Middle Ages for any dignified assemblage, 
but is now restricted to an ecclesiastical sense. 

54. bodkyns. Laurent says “dagues assez longues et estroictes, presque a facon de greffes.” 
Chaucer says “boydekins”. 

63, 70, etc. Brutus Cassius. This fusion of the two names was made by Chaucer in 
the Monk’s Tale 707; and he was followed by Lydgate on at least four separate occasions, 
viz., this, the Serpent of Division, the Coronation Address to Henry VI, and the poem printed 
Halliwell MinPo, p. 125. Bradshaw, in his life of St. Werburgh, line 1714, has Cassius Brutus; 
and Cavendish in his Metrical Visions, line 1130 (Surrey), has Brewtus Cassius. Both these 
men derive from Lydgate, who derives from Chaucer; where Chaucer obtained the error 
is not yet clear, and it is singular that in the same tale in which he uses material from Dante’s 
Inferno, canto 33, and sends his readers to Dante, he should ignore a fact extremely clear 
from a reading of canto 34, where Brutus and Cassius hang separately from the jaws of 
Lucifer. The only case of the error earlier than Chaucer which I have as yet noted is in 
King Alfred’s translation of Boethius chap. 19,—‘“Brutus opre naman Cassius”,—an addition 
by Alfred to the text. Any brief colorless narrative, such as perhaps an epitome of Orosius, 
which used the sign for et between the two proper names, could start the error. Thus, as 
Prof. John L. Lowes points out to me, we find in Philargyrius’ fifth-century commentary on 
Virgil :—“Tiberius Caesar Iulius et Antonius contra Cassium Brutum civile bellum gesserunt.” 

Note that Lydgate’s usual source for this poem, Laurent’s French, is quite definite on 
Brutus and Cassius, speaking of “les deux coniurateurs’’; see note on F 15 below. And 
Coluccio Salutati, in his De Tyranno, discusses at length the propriety of Dante’s handling 
of the two tyrannicides. Lydgate very probably knew no more of Coluccio than the “Lucre- 
tia” which Gloucester ordered him to work into the Fall of Princes book ii; but his ignoring 
of Laurent is a different matter. For the reverse sort of error, with other names, see note 
.on Barclay’s Ship of Fools prol. line 20. 

69. to lustris, two lustres, i. e., ten years. It was just about ten years from Caesar’s 
second invasion of Britain to his assassination in 44 B. C. 

82. “Add the unhappy fate of Caesar.” 

95. malencolik vengeaunce. The chronicler Sichardus, from whom Vincent of Beauvais 
often draws, and Laurent, both emphasize the leniency of Caesar after his assumption of 


FALL OF PRINCES: F 451 


power. Apparently Lydgate’s rime-scheme drives him to a different statement. Of the four 
humors, sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic, the last-named, determined by a pre- 
ponderance of the black bile, was said by medieval medicine to cause gloom, sulleness, and irasci- 
bility. The phrase here fits Achilles sulking in his tent or raging against the slayers of 
Patroclus,—but not Caesar. 


FALL OF PRINCES : F 


8. Brutus Cassius. See note on E 63 ante. 

10-12. Decius Brutus, according to MacCallum, in his Shakespeare’s Roman Plays, “the 
least erected spirit of the group”. He was killed in Gaul while trying to escape to join 
Brutus and Cassius in Macedonia, s. c. 43. 

13. what costis, etc., “wherever one may go”. 

15 ff. Lydgate here disregards all of Laurent’s narrative. The French says that 
“Anthoine filz de seur” was by Caesar’s will named second of the heirs and executors; “et 
octouien nepueu aussi de cesar fut premier heritier’; etc. Octavian fought five battles 
against the rebels, and afterwards “vng cheualier appelle Decius Brutus confessa a octouien 
la maniere de la coniuration faicte contre Cesar / et pource que Decius Brutus auoit este 
vng des coniurateurs / il luy requist pardon en luy monstrant signe de repentance.” Then, 
says Laurent, Dolabella killed Trebonius, another conspirator; ‘‘et Decius Brutus vng autre 
des meurtriers fut prins et occis en France ou il sen estoit fuy.” Then Basilius is disposed 
of; then Brutus and Cassius (“les deux coniurateurs”) gather head at Athens and at Rhodes; 
Octavian and Antony, “iustes vengeurs”, pursue them into Macedonia, where there is a great 
battle. Brutus and Cassius kill each other in despair. Other nobles are drawn into the 
miserable conflict, among them Tullius. 

15. thre yere. There is nothing of this time limit in Laurent; Lydgate, in line 19, refers 
to “auctours”. He could read in Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Historiale, book vi, cap. 
xlii—“percussorum cesaris fere neque triennio quisque amplius superuixit”,—etc. 

Observe, in this stanza, Lydgate’s weak repetition; the last two lines restate the two 
opening lines of the stanza. 

22 ff. Laurent has at this point in his work nothing about tyrannicide; but he elsewhere 
touches on the question, one which aroused much discussion in the century, and had since 
John of Salisbury’s inadequate argument. See Emerton, Humanism and Tyranny, Boston, 
1926; see Lydgate’s Fall of Princes ix:1443 ff. and note the solemn popular vote there, 
justifying the deposition and killing of Andronicus. 


FALL OF PRINCES :G 


3. laumpe and lanterne. See note, FaPrinces C 22. 

5. barein style. See note on Nevill envoy 12. 

10. flours, i. e., of rhetoric. See note, FaPrinces D 10. 

17. termes and resouns, i. €., set phrases and words. For this meaning of “terms” cp. 
CantTales prol. 325, 641, Pard. headlink 25, CanYeoTale 845; for the use of “reason” to mean 
“word, motto, speech”, cp. Libiaus Desconus 3218, 3221, 3430, 4280, 4931, 4948, Squire of 
Lowe Degre 214, Chaucer’s Troilus i:796, Henryson’s Testament of Cressida 606, FaPrinces 
11:2327, and the Orléans transl. here printed, xviii:4. 

Another and very important medieval use of the word reason is in the larger sense of 
“decorum”, closely corresponding to the ordo, ordine, of late Latin rhetoricians and of Italian 
philosophic poets before Dante. See Goffin in MLReview 21:13-18 for Chaucer’s use of 
reason in such sense; and cp. Jacopone da Todi’s laude, e.g. as cited by Gardner, Dante and 
the Mystics, 1913, for praise of Order. Cp. also the use of Reason in contrast with Sensuality, 
the bridled with the unbridled; not only in Lydgate’s poem of that name, but in his St. Ed- 
mund i:398, his St. Albon ii:16, his Troy Book ii:1821-3, FaPrinces i:6200, 6257, ii:579-80, 
2535-6, etc. Note Hamlet’s “blood and judgment”. For the limited simple usage of the word as 
here see note on Shirley 1:78. 


452 NOTES [pace 180 


19. The syntax is here broken and bewildered; the movement would be clearer were 
this line omitted. In 21 to is repeated, though already in line 19; see a similar confusion 
in FaPrinces i :3246-48 and ii:2325-27; also iv :26-28. 

22. kauht a fantasie. To catch envy, catch an indignation, catch a melancholy, espe- 
cially to catch a fantasy, are stereotyped phrases in Lydgate. Chaucer in the MLTale 628 
uses “caught a gret motyf”, and in FrklTale 12, 792 we find—catch a pity, catch routh. The 
word supprisid means, as in Chaucer, “overcome by feeling”. 

24. skie. In Chaucer’s HoFame 1600 this word means cloud, as it usually does to Gower. 
For Lydgate it usually means cloud; and this phrase,—see also FaPrinces i:3539, ix :2020, 
Pilgrimage 9626,—seems to be “a cloudy mass of cloud”. 

32. The subject of spak is not in the text. 

33-35. Too colours sein; i. e., “to see two colors’. Laurent writes :—‘‘quant deux choses 
contraires sont mises lune pres de lautre / elles se monstrent plus legierement.’ Chaucer 
made a similar remark, Troilus 1:642-3; and Lydgate uses it again Temple of Glass 1250. 
See Hawes’ Pastime, line 1349; see Skelton’s Garland 1210, Spenser’s Faerie Queene iii :9,2. 

Observe the like rime 35-36. The rime on other was often awkwardly managed by 
early poets; Lydgate is sometimes reduced to use of the padding phrase “I meene non othir”, 
when he has brothir in rime,—see FaPrinces v :3025-6, and see Troy Book ii:5439-40, 5965-6, 
etc. Chaucer manages better; see HoFame 2101-2, PoFoules 566-7, BoDuchesse 891-2, Troilus 
iv :608-9, KnTale 273-4, etc.; but he has some difficulty HoFame 795-6, 815-6. 

36. In phebus presence, etc. The comparison of the “sun passing the stars’, whether to 
exalt some person praised or to describe the inferiority of the lover-disciple, is very frequent 
in medieval literature. We find in the Carmina Burana no. 143: “Sol solis in stellifero 
Stellas excedit radio”; Chrétien de Troyes, in his Yvain 3245 ff., writes “Si con cierges antre 
chandoiles Et la lune antre les estoiles Et li solaus desor la lune.’ Machaut in his Fontaine 
Amoureuse says “Aussi com li solaus la lune Vient de clarte Avait elle les autres sormonte 
De pris.” See Chaucer’s PoFoules 299-300, Lydgate’s Flower of Courtesy 113-14, his Temple 
of Glass 251-2, his St. Albon i:288-90, his Secrees 344, 348, FaPrinces ii:995-6, ix :1878, 2350- 
$1, 3415-16, Troy Book ii:8471-2; see Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes 148 ff., Hawes’ Pas- 
time 221-4 as here and p. 185 of the Percy Soc. edition. See Bradshaw’s St. Werburge 
i:733-5; and further in note on K 29-30 below. 

42. quaking hond. See note FaPrinces D 46. 

43-49. There is no principal verb or clause here. 

46. colours. . .of eloquens. “Colours” were embellishments of style, ornaments of dic- 
tion. The phrase “colours of rhetoric” is extremely common in English and French medieval 
writers. Its use to mean definite categories of ornamentation goes back to the pseudo- 
Ciceronian treatise Ad Herennium, which contains a list, with definitions, of the various 
“exornationes” of formal speech; this is retained by the Latin grammarians and by Italian and 
French writers of the later Middle Ages. The eight “colors of rhetoric” listed by Dante’s 
teacher Brunetto Latini in his Livre dou Trésor were Ornament, Circumlocution, Comparison, 
Exclamation, Fable, Transition, Demonstration, and Repetition. Under Demonstration Bru- 
netto cites a description of Iseult, feature by feature; for this mode! of praising the lady see 
note here on Hoccleve’s third Roundel. Under Ornament Brunetto says that a simple state- 
ment, such as “Jules Cesar fu empereres de tout le monde”, should be expanded by longer 
and more becoming words; the writer should say “The prudence and valor of Julius Caesar 
brought all the world into subjection to him, and he was lord and emperor of the whole 
earth.” 

The earlier categories of “colors” were much expanded by later medieval rhetoricians ; 
they are enumerated in the “Arts of Poetry” collected by Langlois, Paris, 1902, and by Mari, 
Milan, 1899; see also in especial the Latin treatises edited by Faral, Paris, 1924, comprising 
Matthew of Vendéme and Geoffrey de Vinsauf. It is in Ornament and Repetition that the 
greatest amount of development takes place; the French treatises of Deschamps and of Alain 
Chartier discuss elaborate stanza-forms, acrostic-stanzas, groups of lines beginning with the 
same word or phrase, repetitions of the same word-base in different forms, etc. Among the 
sub-forms of Repetition we find lines ending with the word on which they opened, as in 


pace 181] FALL OF PRINCES: G 453 


Cavendish 212 here; or a sequence of lines each catching up the last word of the preceding 
verse,—i.e., enchained lines; or stanzas similarly enchained. See for example the elegy 
inserted into Barclay’s fourth eclogue, where the last rime of one stanza is the opening rime- 
sound of the next; or see the prologue to Palladius here. For still more elaborate echoes see 
Naetebus’ book on the non-lyric strophe-forms of early French poetry, and see Butler’s 
Forerunners of Dante. In our own time J. C. Squire’s Wind at Evening is a very studied 
and graceful chain-line poem. 

From Dante down, such rhetorical effects have been recognized. Dante was austerely 
sparing in his use of lines with identical beginning, somewhat freer in his admission of 
words built on an identical base; the passage with recurrent onor—, Inferno 4:72-80, is 
the longest in his work. It was more or less imitated by Tennyson at the opening of 
The Marriage of Geraint, with the word Jove; and Tennyson has used groups of lines 
beginning alike with far more freedom than Dante. A more delicate form of this “color of 
rhetoric” is the grouping by Shelley or by Keats of adjectives with similar prefixes or suf- 
fixes; for example,—‘“With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying,” (Prometheus Unbound iii, 
3:157) ; or in the opening of Hyperion,—‘“His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed.’ But the sensitized modern ear has sought 
a variety and attained a delicacy not in the medieval code. 

With the approach and arrival of humanism in England, many other modes of ornament 
became prevalent. The list of classical (and Biblical) examples was developed, naturally, 
far beyond what the classical or post-classical mind had deemed appropriate; Latin tags, 
borrowed or manufactured polysyllables, plays upon words, were everywhere. Lydgate does 
not employ the play upon words, as Ovid had employed it; but his admiration for “aureate 
language” is very great. Indeed, we cannot always interpret a digression, or even a tedious 
repetition of material, by him, as a proof of his incompetence and dulness. He, or Cavendish, 
or many a late medieval writer, may be following a principle, that of rhetorical ornamentation 
and expansion. The result is undoubtedly similar, for the average reader, to what pure dulness 
would produce; but the student perceives an attempt, however clumsy, to follow a code. See 
note on Cavendish line 232. 

52. afforcid his corage. See same phrase Churl 64. 

55. ditees. This word may mean in Mid. Eng. either “compositions” or “compositions 
in verse, songs”. For the former sense see the Romaunt of the Rose 5285-6, “And whilom 
of this (amitee) Spak Tullius in a ditee’, i. e, De Amicitia; see FaPrinces A 256, G 225. 
For the latter sense see FaPrinces A 352, 456 above. 

63. As Koeppel points out in his De Casibus monograph, p. 65, Lydgate took Laurent’s 
translata, “transplanted”, to mean “translated”. The French is: “Tulle non pas seulement 
translata lart de rhetorique de Grec en langage latin / mais augmenta accreut & aorna la 
science tellement que par luy elle creust & croist’—etc. Isidor, in his Etymologies ii:2, says 
that “haec autem disciplina [i. e., rhetoric] a Graecis inventa est,. ..translata in latinum a 
Tullio ...” This statement is correctly rendered by Lydgate in FaPrinces vi:3300-01. 

67. The vices of Rome, mentioned by Laurent, are omitted by Lydgate. 

69. tyme. Accusative of duration. 

71, 75. There is no auxiliary for the verb. 

80. There is no principal verb for Catalina. Lydgate omits mention of Catiline’s noble 
origin and picture of his financial difficulties, except for a slight allusion to the latter in 
line 93. 

96. “Found out means, did devise ways to his purpose”, etc. The omission of the sub- 
ject and the connective makes the syntax unclear. 

102. Lydgate omits the go-between Fulvia mentioned by Laurent. 

109. Lydgate reduces to generalities Laurent’s vigorous description of Cicero shattering 
“par tres aigres & mordantes parolles. . .la paresseuse souffrance des senateurs.” 

116. Laurent here dwells on Catiline’s courage, and has no moralizing such as Lydgate’s 
in 118-19. 

122. Ceregus. Read Cetegus. 


454 NOTES [pace 182 


125-6. Tulliane ... the prisoun. Laurent gives this detail. There was on the Capitoline 
a prison built by Servius Tullius, but from the twelfth century the name “Tullian” was 
incorrectly applied to the locality on which stood a prison erected by Appius Claudius. Cicero 
had no connection with either. See Gregorovius, Gesch. der Stadt Rom in Mittelalter, iv :350, 
note 2. 

127. Between the material of this and of the preceding stanza there intervenes in Laurent 
and in Boccaccio an interesting simile omitted by Lydgate. It runs in the Latin: “Sic armatos 
duces togatus excessit Cicero si is medicus praeferendus est qui secretam adque laetiferam intes- 
tinorum vomicam argumentis exclusit et repulit; ei qui vulnus adparens et si maximum sit 
vnguentis et arte traxit in cicatricem.’ We may note here Boccaccio’s reminder of Cicero’s 
own line of verse,—‘‘Cedant arma togae...” etc. 

133. clergy, learning. Bergen’s text reads polycie. 

140. Here Boccaccio said: “vt Plotinum Gallum / qui primus vrbi rhetoricam Latine 
monstrauit / & Miltacilium Plotum & alterum ex Graccis / atque Hortensium / aliosque 
elegantissimos oratores / Graecosque veteres anteiret.’ Laurent wrote: “que il surmonta 
aussi en rethoricque Milius catilius / et Gracius / et Hortense & autres plusieurs orateurs 
latins treselegans et autres anciens orateurs de Grece.’”’ The word Policius here reads in other 
MSS Plocius; the reference is to Plotius Gallus, of whom it is recorded: “Plotius Gallus 
primus Romae latinam rhetoricam docuit.” See Jerome’s comment. on Eusebius, ed. Migne, 
viii:528; and note that the name is not in Laurent. “Gracce” is probably the younger Grac- 
chus, a most brilliant orator. 

145. The subject of the verb is again omitted. 

146-7. The golden trumpe. This allusion is drawn from Chaucer’s HoFame iii, where 
Aeolus, at Fame’s command, blows good report through his golden trumpet, ill report through 
one of brass. See Cavendish, line 1222 here. 

154. lanterne... & liht. See line 3 above, and note on FaPrinces C 22. 

156-68. This is from Laurent, with praise of Cicero’s “doulce et amesuree prononcia- 
tion de voix”. 

159, Laurent gives the names of the defendants, 

160-1. The text printed by Dr. Bergen reads repreeff at close of 161,—an error by 
contamination in our text. 

172. Note the elision of that he was. 

173-5. platon. . .bees...hony. The story of the bees moistening the lips of the infant 
Plato with honey is in both Laurent and Boccaccio, in John of Salisbury’s Polycraticus i, 
chap. 13, and in Valerius Maximus i, chap. 6. 

178. sours and welle. This phrase, also gynnyng and grounde, are frequent in Lydgate. 
In this poem i:3887 Atreus is “of tresoun sours and welle”; in viii:2976-7 Arthur’s court 
is “sours and welle” of martial deeds, etc. Cp. Skelton, Garland 850. 

179. merour. Insistence that a knight or a lady is “the glass” not merely of fashion 
but of all virtues, is exceedingly frequent in medieval literature. In Chaucer’s MLTale 68, 
Constance is “mirrour of alle curteisye”; the lady of Lydgate’s Temple of Glass 754 is “mir- 
our of wit”; in this poem vii:784 Nero is “cheef merour of diffame”. For use of the term 
Speculum or Mirror in titles of books see note on Ship of Fools 85, 

183. Lydgate omits to mention Cicero’s return to Rome, which Laurent describes. 

186. Lydgate omits the names given by Laurent. 

193. pronunciacioun, “oratorical delivery”. This is the NED’s earliest case of the word 
in this sense; Laurent speaks at this point of Cicero’s “doulce et amesuree prononciation de~ 
voix”. But Lydgate is using, I think, Vinsauf’s De arte versificandi. In Faral’s edition of 
that work, p. 318, we find Pronunciation termed “quasi totius orationis condimentum, ut sine 
qua totum est insipidum et inconditum. Pronuntiatio sic describitur a Tullio in Rhetoricis: 
‘Pronuntiatio est vocis, vultus, gestus moderatio cum venustate’”. By Rhetoricis, Vinsauf 
means the pseudo-Ciceronian treatise Ad Herennium, see Marx’s ed., p. 188, bk. i, 2. For 
Vinsauf’s further discussion, see note on 197 below. 

The next chapter of the Fall of Princes, against “Janglers and Diffamers of Rethorique”, 
gives, following Laurent, five “banners of eloquence”, viz., Invention, Disposition, Elocution, 


PAGE 183] FALL OF PRINCES: G 455 


Pronunciation, Remembrance. In Ad Herennium and in Isidor’s Etymologies ii:3, Mem- 
ory precedes Pronunciation in the list; in the Margarita Philosophica perhaps known to 
Hawes and in Hawes’ Pastime 659 ff., the order is as in Lydgate. See note on Hawes loc. cit. 

196. His thank receivith. “He earns his reward.” (?) 

197-203. glad mateere ... glad cheere. Lydgate omits Laurent’s comment that in a mere 
reading of Cicero one must lose his “bonne prononciation et bel maintien”; in the English we 
find instead this passage, which appears again 3347 ff. as “An heuy mateer requereth an heuy 
cheer To a glad mateer longeth weel gladnesse”. Here, line 203, Lydgate ascribes the dictum 
to Cicero. The passage of de Vinsauf above cited continues: “Si materia fuerit de dolore, vox 
et vultus et gestus debent conformari materiae et testes esse doloris. Si fuerit de gaudio, 
similiter vox et vultus et gestus debent attestari laetitiae” etc. If Lydgate read this passage, he 
might not perceive the change from the Rhetoricis citation to Vinsauf’s own words, and might 
thus credit all to Cicero. Something similar, indeed, may be read near the close of the De 
Oratore; and the precept was general, from Horace’s “Tristia maestum Vultum verba decent,” 
(Ars Poetica 105) to Chaucer’s Troilus i:12-14. But Chaucer says nothing of Cicero in 
connection with the dictum. See the Troy Book iii:5455-56; see note on Cavendish line 63. 

208-10. Laurent introduces these homely details more artistically. After saying, as 
above, that no reading of Cicero can produce the effect of his delivery, and that he himself 
is powerless to describe such eloquence, he adds that he will pass over mention of Cicero’s 
wealth, his wife, his friends, because such details are not wisely mingled with account of the 
honor paid Cicero for his especial virtues. He then goes on to recount Cicero’s banishments 
and death; Lydgate inserts, from Vincent de Beauvais, a list of his works. 

211 ff. For this list of Cicero’s works Lydgate refers, line 215, to Vincent of Beau- 
vais; see the Speculum Historiale, ed. 1494, book vy, chap 6. He uses, however, not all of 
the books mentioned by Vincent, whose list is: De Officiis, De Amicitia, De Senectute, De 
Oratore, De Paradoxis, the Philippics, two books of ‘‘Rethoricorum”, the Tusculan disputa- 
tions, twelve books of orations, six books of invectives, De Legibus, De Fine Boni et Mali, De 
Natura Deorum, De Divinatione, De Fato, De Creatione Mundi, Ad Hortensium, De Parti- 
tione Orationis, the Academics. To Vincent’s list Lydgate adds the Dream of Scipio, De 
Lege Agraria, De Gloria, De Re Publica. 

218. the dreme of Scipioun. This narrative was by Cicero included in book vi of his 
De Re Publica, of which portions only have come down to us; but the “Somnium Scipionis” 
was preserved in a commentary by Macrobius, and attained great popularity in the Middle 
Ages. See, for example, Chaucer’s PoFoules. 

221. of cithe lond. Read “of tilth of lond’; so other MSS and the 1554 print. By this 
is probably meant the three orations De Lege Agraria, in which Cicero combated the proposal 
of a tribune to purchase and distribute lands in Italy. Vincent does not separately mention 
the work. 

223. as he sayth himselue. Cp. “himself so doth express’, A 303 here. Does Cicero 
say this? 

228. Lydgate returns to Laurent as his source. 

233. In campania at Ative. Laurent gives no name to the city; Lydgate could obtain 
his Atine (the MS wrongly writes Ative) either from Boccaccio or from Valerius Maximus; 
in the latter the dream of Cicero, not in Laurent, is fully given. 

239-41. Cp. the opening of Dante’s Inferno. 

250-52. The pronouns are confused. The “seriaunt” is to convey Cicero to the sepul- 
ture of Marius. 

277-78. Again, as often, the ablative absolute. 

279. beyng of assent probably refers to Cicero. 

281. ffaryman. Laurent has “vne ville appelle Fornian”. Cicero’s country seat near 
Formiae is meant. 

285. Inuentiff. Bergen’s text reads “invectiff scripture”, which must be correct. 

287. Cleopatraas. This form is regular in Lydgate, and occurs in Chaucer, see Legend 
582, 601, 604. Laurent does not mention the name here. 


456 NOTES [PAGE 184 


291. At this point Laurent tells the story of Popilius Lena’s debt of gratitude to 
Cicero; Lydgate defers it until after narrating the murder. It is given at length in Valerius 
Maximus v, chap. 3. Both in the MS and in the French and English early prints the ingrate’s 
name is written with nasal mark above the 0. The free use of Pompey’s name in this part 
of the poem may have led by contamination to the writing Pompilius. 

292. who is omitted before gat. 

295 ff. Clumsily expressed. The sense is: “By virtue of the commission given to 
Popilius, who took licence and liberty from Antony, it followed that the chief rhetorician 
who ever was in the city, he who among Romans added dignity to Rome, was slain.” 

301. This renders Valerius Maximus’ statement that Popilius “rogavit” to be sent on 
the errand of execution. 

306-8. Laurent’s comment on Antony’s vengeance for Cicero’s “invective” is that it is 
unwise in this world to tell the whole truth, because of the hate thereby incurred. The 
Frenchman drops a bit of practical wisdom; the English monk repeats a proverb. 

309-15 are added by Lydgate. Lines 311-12 mean that whoever is in heart treasonable 
determines to do ill in return for good will. Between 314 and 315 supply “that it is”. 

317. This MS did not complete the line; bracketed words from Harley 1245. 

320. to heere abhominable is parenthetical. On the orthography see Walton E 93 note. 

321-2 means that he, Cicero, while living, took upon him to write, etc. 

321-6. Laurent laments “le sage et venerable test de Tulle en qui estoit enclose toute 
eloquence latine”’, and the right hand with which so many notable books were written. He 
narrates how head and hand were set up on two lances, but has nothing of 327-30 as here; 
the rest of his chapter demands of God why his fire, his thunderstroke, his earthquake, did not 
overwhelm the “mauldit varlet” Popilius. 

With this lament for head and hand cp. that for the lips of Orpheus, Ovid’s Metam. 
xi:41-43, and the mention of Ceyx’s hand ibid., xi:560-61. 


FALL OF PRINCES : H 


1. Symak. Symmachus, Boethius’ father-in-law, an ex-consul, historian, and patriot, 
one of the most cultivated men of his time, was involved in Boethius’ fate. See Walton 
A 217 ff. ante. 

11. a geyn to, against two. 

11 ff. Boethius has told his own story of his resistance to the “graft” practised by un- 
scrupulous Imperial officials; see the Consolatio bk. i, prose 4. Of the full account Lydgate 
uses very little. 

12. wiht. Our MS writes whiht. 

15. Theodorik, Theodoric the Ostrogothic Emperor, treated by Lydgate solely as usurper 
and tyrant; this view he could get from Laurent, see introd. ante. 

19. Dide, i.e., he did, with the omission of subject as so frequently in Lydgate and 
occasionally in Chaucer. See 33 and 35 below. 

23. his comon. Bergen’s text reads the comon, i.e., the common people. 

28. Pauwye, Pavia in Lombardy, about 20 miles from Milan, and one of the leading cities 
in Italy under the Lombard emperors, Until 1584, a tower in Pavia was pointed out as 
Boethius’ place of detention. Laurent says nothing of Pavia, only of Ravenna, whither the 
prisoner was first sent. Boccaccio speaks of Ravenna as Boethius’ earlier prison, “Ticinum”, 
ie. Pavia, as the place of his death. See Walton A 207-222. 

32-55. This meager treatment of Boethius as philosopher and as (supposed) Christian 
is surprising in a Churchman and a disciple of Chaucer. With the anticlimax of the last 
line, forced by the rime, cp. Chaucer’s Troilus iv:25, 762, MoTale 3948; see an egregious 
case in the lines printed in my Chaucer Manual, p. 398-9. The finale of Lydgate’s St. Giles— 
“Thi goost to God conveied vp by grace With hooly angelis moneth of Septembre’’,—is less 
absurd than at the first glance, because the poem was probably for use on the saint’s day, and 
the emphasis thus understandable. 


PAGE 186] FALL OF PRINCES: K 457 


Laurent says nothing of a work on the Trinity by Boethius, and the library of Bury 
St. Edmunds, Lydgate’s Abbey, contained only the Consolatio and the treatises on Music and 
on Arithmetic; see Dr. James on the Abbey, p. 30. 


FALL OF PRINCES : K 


4. colours of cadence, ornament by ?rhythm or measure. For cadence the NED cites 
first Chaucer’s HoFame 112, “In ryme or elles in cadence’. Gower, Confessio iv :2413-15, 
says that “Heredot” was earliest in the science “Of meter of rime and of cadence’. The 
Coventry Mysteries speak of ‘‘gramer cadens and of prosodye”. In Wyntoun’s Orygynall 
Cronykill the word obviously means rhythm, as it does to Douglas; and in several fifteenth- 
century cases the term is applied to rhythmic prose. Thus, a piece of Latin copied by Shirley 
into MS Ashmole 59, fol. 77, is headed as “prosed in feyre cadence”; and in Brit.Mus.Royal 
12 B xvii a tract on prose rhythm is headed “Iam de cadenciis”. Skeat in his note on the 
line HoFame 112 opined that cadence may possibly have meant couplet-lines, while rime 
meant their grouping into stanzas. But see above. 

Lydgate uses this same phrase in the envoy to his St. Edmund; in the Troy Book prol. 
362 he speaks of “craft and cadence”, and in Guy of Warwick 588 he says he “hadde of 
cadence no colour”. A poem attributed to Lydgate by Shirley in Ashmole 59 fol. 18 speaks 
of “metres and cadence”. For the term colour, “rhetorical ornament’, see note on FaPrinces 
G 46. 

5. moral Senec, Seneca the moralist, “most grave in his discourse”. In A 253 ante 
Lydgate spoke of Seneca as a tragic writer, but “of great moralite’. Koeppel, p. 62-3 
says that although Boccaccio made two Senecas out of the tragedian and the philosopher, Lyd- 
gate knows that they are one. 

11. do correccion. The usual request of the poet endeavoring to please a patron. See 
note on Cavendish 52 here. The MS erroneously reads ffauoutre. 

13. colours. Lydgate plays on the double meaning of the word, as actual hue and as 
rhetorical ornament. 

15 ff. The monk now disclaims knowledge of Virgil, of Homer, of Dares Phrygius, 
of Ovid and of Chaucer’s “balladis”. So far as the Fall of Princes is concerned, no 
direct acquaintance with Virgil appears, although his works are enumerated iv:67-91 and 
his name mentioned with praise. In the same passage various works by Ovid are listed, and 
of the Metamorphoses at least Lydgate had direct knowledge, see p. 92 here. Homer, it is 
needless to say, Lydgate did not know; Dares Phrygius, whose meagre Latin account of the 
Trojan War was used by Guido delle Colonne, is mentioned by Lydgate Troy Book i:310 as 
one of the predecessors of his own author, Guido. The list of these predecessors, there 
given, is Ovid, Virgil who followed Homer, Lollius, and above all “Dares Frigius” and 
“Dytes eke”—i.e. Dictys Cretensis, and then Guido. What Lygate means by declaring 
his ignorance of Chaucer’s sovereign ballads we do not know, nor exactly what he means by 
that term. 

23. in fantasy. Bergen’s text, mi fantasy. 

24-28. The mention of Gower and of Strode, together, is evidently a following of Troi- 
lus v:1856-57; the same descriptive epithets are used. The monk adds to this brief list of 
English writers the hermit of Hampole, reputed translator of the Stimulus Conscientiae. 

29-30. As the... sonne, etc. A favorite simile with Lydgate. See note on G 36 ante, to 
which add Seneca’s ‘“(Quemadmodum minuta lumina claritas solis obscurat”, epist. Ixvi to 
Lucilius; cp. also Ovid, Metam.ii:722-24, and Petrarch, In Vita, canzone 12, lines 69-70, 218. 

31. cacheth. Other MSS chaceth. 

37. Petrake. On this spelling see note A 257 ante. The Liber Augustalis may be meant. 

41. did. Note the “modern” usage, as in 37. See note Dance 136, and do in Glossary. 

42-3. Partial liaison of stanzas. See note Mass 74-97. 

45. Lydgate here gives the name of the Suffolk village in which he was born, and 
whence he probably took his name. See this poem viii:194, and note to Dance 670. 


458 NOTES [PAGE 187 


48. On the life of St. Edmund, king of the East Angles at the time of the Danish 
incursions, and of his martyrdom and miracles, Lydgate composed a poem in three books, at 
the bidding of his abbot, for King Henry VI. The royal presentation copy still exists, 
Harley 2278 of the British Museum. 

49. Oxne. Hoxne, twenty miles from Thetford; the site of the battle in which Edmund 
was slain. He was ultimately interred at Bury St. Edmunds, later the site of the monastery 
to which Lydgate belonged. 

51-3. For this mode of disclaiming inspiration see note on Walton A 58 here. Chaucer, 
in the Franklin’s headlink, joined Parnassus and Cicero as sources of eloquence; and he 
was followed by Bokenam as cited. But Lydgate here uses Citheron instead of Cicero, in 
which he is justified by classic myth, for the range of mountains between Boeotia and Attica, 
called Cithaeron, was sacred to Dionysus and to the Muses. See also Burgh’s letter to 
Lydgate, line 7 and note. The Roman de la Rose, 15865, 15867, made Cithaeron the special 
abode of Venus, and also gave the word a short penult, kept by Chaucer, KnTale 1078, 1365, 
and by Lydgate as cited in the note on Burgh 7. Lydgate uses the word again in FaPrinces 
ix :3592; but in this latter passage it is not certain whether Cithaeron or Cicero is meant, and 
the scribes add to the uncertainty. In the FranklTale many MSS write Cithero, Scithero, just 
as some write Marcus Tullius and Cicero; and in the Court of Sapience we find Cythero 
among philosophers. 


BURGH’S LETTER TO LYDGATE 


1-2. Nat dremyd I, etc. See note on Walton A 58. 

3. the pale pirus. A miswriting by Stow or his original is here probable. Stow wrote 
priu, struck it through, and proceeded with pirus. Possibly Pieria, one of the earliest places 
where the Muses were worshipped; but why pale? 

5. Tagus. Allusions to the river Tagus and its golden sands are several times made by 
Ovid and by Claudian. Boethius in the Consolatio iii metr. 10 speaks of “Tagus aureis 
harenis’, but Chaucer does not transfer the bit elsewhere. Isidor twice mentions Tagus, 
Etymol. xiii :21,33 and xiv:4,29; and in the fifteenth century the river again becomes literary 
material, still more so in the Renaissance. See FaPrinces iii:3734, Douglas’ Palice of Honour, 
prol. 42, the Epist. Obscurorum Virorum, p. 23 of the 1909 edition, Wyatt, Browne’s Britannia’s 
Pastorals, etc. 

7. Citero or elicon. Stow’s script may be read either Cicero or Citero, ie., Mt. Cithaeron 
in the latter case. Steele and Foerster print Cicero; but the confusion is so frequent in MSS, 
the use of Tullius as Cicero’s name so regular in this period, and the coupling with Mt. 
Helicon so plain that Burgh, at least must have meant Cithero. The word was regularly 
scanned with short penult in Middle English. See its use by Lydgate in Troy Book ii:3456, 
3635, iv :4602, 5708. See note on Mass line 5 and on FaPrinces K 51-3. 

The mountain Helicon and its spring were often confused by medieval writers, because 
of ambiguity already in the Aeneid vii:641, Dante’s Purgatorio 29:40. Boccaccio is clear, 
Teseide i:1 and xi stanza 63; but Chaucer is not, HoFame 521-2, Anelida 15-18, Troilus 
iii:1809-10; nor is Lydgate, Troy Book prol. 42, i:1612, ii1:5432, TemGlass 706, St. Edmund 
envoy. Cp. Court of Love 22, Skelton’s GarlLaurell 73-4 and Philip Sparrow 609-10; especially 
Spenser, ShepCal April 41-2. See Pilgrimage to Parnassus act i. 

8. founde. Steele prints formde. 

9. moste. The MS writes noste. 

10. Aristotell, etc. Burgh may mean Aristotle, Gorgias, and Hermogenes, as Stow writes, 
or Aristotle, Gorgias, and Hermagoras as in Isidor, Etymol, ii, 2. Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric 
is meant. Gorgias is not the sophist contemporary with Socrates, but a later author of a 
treatise on the figures of speech, partly preserved in a Latin paraphrase,—see Halm’s 
Rhetori Latini Minores, Leipzig, 1863. Hermogenes was a Greek rhetorician of the second cen- 
tury, author of a treatise on oratory still in existence,—see Halm as above. Hermagoras, also a 
Greek rhetorician, was contemporary with Cicero. NHermogenes is mentioned in Lydgate’s 
Secrees 964, 1023, etc. 


PAGE 189] BURGH TO LYDGATE 459 


13. tullius etc. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Francis Petrarch, Quintilian. The linking of 
Petrarch’s name with those of the elder writers is noteworthy. 

16. torqwat sowereyne. Boethius, i.e., Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boethius. 
See p. 39 here. 

17. Naso, i.e. Ovidius Naso. His Metamorphoses are meant by line 18, which is mud- 
dled in transcription. 

20. porcyus, i.e. Persius.—marcyan, printed marycan by Steele, is Martianus Capella, 
author of the De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae. 

21. lauriate bocase. Boccaccio was not “laureate” in the sense in which Petrarch was; 
he never received the laurel crown. But the term was applied in this period to many great 
writers, see note on Churl 15. 

22. seyne. Steele prints peyne—Innat sapience. See Hoccleve’s Regement 2130. 

23. See note on FaPrinces D 10. 

30. booke wt... clasppes seven. The allusion is to the seven liberal arts, which en- 
close the volume of literature and of science. 

34. a benedicite. The two lines are an admiring exclamation—“Ah, Heaven bless you, 
Master Lydgate, what a man you are!” Steele prints di benedicite. Cp. Chaucer’s BoDuchesse 
859, 895, 919. 

40. garland of Ive. The ivy garland had in ancient times no special meaning, as had 
the wreaths of laurel, grass, bay, oak, and olive. The garland of bay was at Athens worn by 
orators while speaking, and that of olive was given to victors in the games or to specially- 
deserving citizens. Either bay or olive would single Lydgate out more than does the gar- 
land of ivy which, mingled with wool or with flowers, was worn by any Greek or Roman on 
festival occasions. 

43. chebri place, etc. Burgh here gives the place of his letter; see introduction ante. 
Foerster would interpret chebri place as “‘shivery place”, alluding to the winter weather; but 
this appears to me very doubtful. The word shiver has indeed the modern sense in Black 
Knight 230, but the transference of meaning Foerster suggests has no example in the NED 
before 1850, and is strongly modern in feeling. I would sooner expect “Chebri Place” 
to be the name of the building in which Burgh is writing; for a number of localities and 
manorhouses in Essex were known as “Places”, and one of the Abbey-tenements may have 
borne that title from its former owner. There was, for instance, a family Chevere (or 
Cheever?) in that part of Essex. I have, however, not found the name in the list of the 
Abbey’s possessions. See Morant, Hist. and Antiq. of Essex, London, 1768, i:327-338, 
especially 335 note. 

45. mount Canace. Boccaccio’s De Montibus says of Mt. Canatus, in Spain, that it is 
“excelsus”’, has a deep black lake atop, and is so often the source of tempest that it is believed 
to be the abode of demons; which, Boccaccio adds, ‘‘meo iudicio fabulosa”. 

50 ff. Burgh gives his date of writing as December the eleventh, but gives no year. 
If the letter were actually sent, omission of the year would be natural. 

51. chare, chariot. Steele prints share. 


SHIRLEY’S TABLES OF CONTENTS : I 


26. ordre. The medieval rhetorical code required an “orderly’ exhaustive tabulation of 
qualities or points. On its feature-by-feature description see note on Hoccleve’s third Roundel, 
ante; on the sections of an argument or list cp. Chaucer’s Second Nun’s Tale 358, “It 
were ful hard by ordre for to seyn How many wondres Jesus for hem wroghte.” 

Compare also such phrases as “the ordre of compleynt’, Chaucer’s Mars 155, or “the 
ordre of endityng”, Hoccleve’s poem to the Duke of York 50, for order as “rhetorical code.” 
Cp. Lydgate’s very frequent use of ceriousli, “serially”. 

35. Chaucer’s translation of Boethius’ Consolatio is followed in the MS by a prose 
tractate on the martyrdom of Nicodemus, which fills the next twenty pages. Shirley says 
that this translation from the Latin was made by John Trevisa for his patron Thomas lord 
Berkeley. Berkeley was father of that Elizabeth Countess of Warwick who accepted the 


460 NOTES [PAGE 195 


dedication of John Walton’s Boethius-translation; see p. 39 here. He commissioned from 
John Trevisa (1326-1412) translations of Higden’s Polychronicon and of Bartholomaeus’ 
De Proprietatibus Rerum; various other works are less certainly ascribed to Trevisa, e.g., 
Englishings of Vegetius’ De Re Militari and of Aegidius de Colonna’s De Regimine Principum. 

49. maystre of be game, Master of Game, a treatise on hunting by Edward second duke of 
York. This has been edited by W. A. and F. Baillie-Grohman, with an introd. by Theodore 
Roosevelt, London, 1904, again 1909. 

Edward York, killed at Agincourt in 1415, is the Aumerle of Shakespeare’s Richard II. 
He dedicated his work to Henry prince of Wales, afterward Henry the Fifth, whose Master 
of Game, i.e. of the Hunt, he was. 

57. Toalle. Read So alle? 

66. Regula sacerdotalis. This article does not come next in the MS, but after the Com- 
plaint of the Black Knight, which now follows. The Regula fills four and one-half leaves, 
prose, and in its colophon is the phrase “tam dominis quam communibus” which Shirley uses 
in line 18 of this poem. Shirley professes ignorance of the tractate’s authorship. 

70-71. On these lines I can throw no light. They seem more useful as rime-connectives 
than as sense-connectives. 
of his introd. to the EETS edition of the Temple of Glass. 

73. of a knyght. Lydgate’s Complaint of the Black Knight; see my Chaucer Manual, 
p. 413. 

78. Cp. Hall’s Chronicle (1548), “Gounes embrodred with reasons of golde that sayd adieu 
Iunesse.” 

81. clobed in black. Lydgate belonged to the Benedictines or Black Friars. Shirley’s tone 
of familiarity toward Lydgate should be noted; cp. the following piece of verse. 

87. ober balades. The remainder of MS Adds. 16165 is filled with Chaucer’s Anelida, 
Lydgate’s St. Anne and his Departing of Chaucer, Richard Beauchamp Earl of Warwick’s 
poem to Lady Despenser, and by a number of short amatory verse-bits. Warwick’s poem has 
been edited by MacCracken in PMLA 22:597; the Departing of Chaucer was printed by me 
in ModPhil 1 :333-36, repr. by Ruud in Thomas Chaucer, pp. 119-121. See my Manual, p. 327. 

92. ebounden. Note the peculiar Shirleyan spelling, and cp. ellas in 11:43, filowibe 
in 45 here. 


SHIRLEY’S TABLES OF CONTENTS : II 


In this text, of 1558, observe the constant writing ye for older pe. The use of y, in print 
and in script, to replace the obsolete rune so similar in shape, has led to our pseudo-archaism 
of “Ye olde”. 

12. coth. The MS so reads; but it may be that ooth was intended; in either case, a 
padding phrase. 

16. “What were (once) widely scattered are afterwards here brought together.” The 
pause is in front of eft. 

21. humayne pilgrymage. This prose translation, ? of Deguileville’s Pélerinage de la vie 
humaine may or may not be ascribed by Shirley to Lydgate, according as one treats line 24. 
Lydgate executed a verse-translation of Deguileville’s second recension, which is ed. EETS 
1899-1904, and a prose Englishing of the earlier French recension is printed by the Roxburghe 
Club, 1869. The relations of the Englishings of Deguileville are not clear. 

It is to be noted that although Stow in this part of his volume, foll. 132a-179a, is tran- 
scribing from Shirley, and from the existing MS Trinity College R 3, 20 (see pp. 79, 194 ante), 
the Trinity volume does not now contain the Pilgrimage-translation. But as that volume’s 
first existing quire is marked xiiij, and as there is an isolated copy of the prose translation, 
filling 93 leaves though imperfect, in the Sion College Shirley MS, I have queried if the Sion 
MS be the missing Shirley gatherings, once part of the Trinity codex. 


PAGE 197] SHIRLEY’S TABLES 461 


23. many a roundell and balade. The Trinity MS contains a number of French roundels 
by the duke of Suffolk; and many of its poems, especially the French, are headed “Balade gaye 
et gracieux”, etc. Shirley cannot apply “many a roundell” to Lydgate. 

25. sugred mouthe. See note on Thebes 52. 

29-30. pleyinges ... of kynges. Probably the royal mummings are meant. 

31. Supply is before so. 

32. “He ought to receive a formal expression of gratitude from all our nation.” 

40 ff. “I believe his nobles (i.e., gold coins) are spent, and nearly all his shillings.” Note 
Lydgate’s pleas for money, as in the Letter to Gloucester, here printed, p. 149. With 42 cep. 
Thebes 90. 

45. sainte margarete. This poem is printed by MacCracken i:173 ff., from the Durham 
MS. All that intervenes between the Pilgrimage-translation and this poem on fol. 178 is 
summarily mentioned by Shirley. He now pauses over a translation commissioned by the 
countess of March, and as a Londoner he mentions the countess’ burial place in London. 

57. by lordes and by clerkes. This statement represents the whole MS better than 
it does the leaves after the Life of St. Margaret. 

61. persayue, etc. The MS writes without the er-flourish. 

71. correcte. Shirley asks his readers to correct metrical and scribal errors. It may 
be that the modesty, or assumed modesty, of an author in making this conventional plea 
received emphasis from his realization of scribal carelessness. 

76. grac. So in the MS. 

84. weddinge. Is reading meant? See Shirley 1:100. 

88. when you list send. Shirley's function as a book-lender is plainly stated. 

90. as... owne man, “as much as if I were actually of your household.” 

94. The last word is partly deleted, and doubtless should be so entirely. 

99. in ernest nor in game. A convenient padding phrase; see Troilus iv:1465, Troy Book 
iv :4559, v :2687, etc. 


REPROOF TO LYDGATE 


The MS Fairfax 16 of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the source of our text, is a thick 
but not large vellum volume of 336 leaves, written almost entirely in one clear neat firm 
book-hand; one of its copied poems postdates the death of Henry the Fifth in 1422. It bears 
on leaf 14 verso an elaborate illumination to illustrate Chaucer’s Mars, which faces the pic- 
ture; in the border of this are the arms of Stanley-Storeton-Hooton. Its contents are listed 
pp. 334-35 of my Chaucer Manual, where, on p. 338, will be found a parallel-table proving 
the close relationship between this volume and two others of the Bodleian Library. The Fairfax 
scribe, although insensitive to the value of -e final (see ModPhii 23:129-52), is steadily 
consistent in orthography and above the average in accuracy. 

Since the publication of my Chaucer Manual, the then unpubd. texts of Fairfax have 
appeared in print; the series of short poems on foll. 318a-329a was ed. by MacCracken in 
PMLA 26:142 ff.; the poem “How a Lover Praiseth his Lady’ was pubd. by me in Mod 
Phil 21:379-95; the Lover’s Mass is again printed here p. 207; and one of the short poems 
ed. by MacCracken, the Reproof to Lydgate, is included in this volume, as here. 

4. slouthe, sloth or remissness. As Sloth was one of the Seven Deadly Sins for a 
Christian, so was it most blameworthy in a lover. Gower in his Confessio bk. iv illustrates 
the failing by several narratives, among them that of Demophoon and Phyllis, in which latter 
he twice speaks of Demophoon’s “‘sloth” in not returning to the deceived and despairing Phyllis. 
Lydgate, BlKnight 380, also mentions the “sloth” of Demophoon, which he would not get 
from Chaucer’s Legend 2394 ff., since Chaucer denounces the traitor Demophoon, taking his 
key from Ovid’s Heroides ii. The “sloth” mentioned by Orléans, extract vi here, seems to be 
merely neglect on the lady’s part; and see TemGlas 379, FlandLeaf 549. A more serious and 
philosophical conception of “sloth” in love is that of Dante in the Purgatorio, where the 
seven capital sins are treated as arising from disordered love. Sloth is there deficient love, 
the loving too little what should be the goal of the mind’s desire. See Gardner, Dante and the 


462 NOTES [PAGE 200 


Mystics, 1913, pp. 55-57 and mark the notion of ordo or reason as the essence of virtus. 
See note on FaPrinces G 17 here. 

5. wytt the. Probably miswritten for wytt ye, the y treated as the rune th. 

6. See prol. to the Legend of Good Women (B) 202. 

14. The MS omits to. 

29. MacCracken, loc. cit., above, says “This is certainly a burlesque of Lydgate’s style.” 

31. colours, i.e., of rhetoric; see note FaPrinces G 46 above. 

36 ff. Lydgate is now censured for saying that love is dotage, that great clerks have 
yielded to it, that women are false and fickle, and that they can pretend love without feeling it. 

40. MacCracken, loc. cit., above, says “This is certainly a parody on the moral poem by 
Lydgate with the refrain ‘Who sueth vertu vertu he shal lere’.” It may be, however, that 
both pieces of verse used a current proverb. 

58. The MS has myned instead of meuyd. 

65. Thynk whens, etc. Cp. Hoccleve’s Letter of Cupid 178, “Take hede of whom / 
thou took thy bygynnyng”. Another and different use is Ovid’s in Metam. iii:543, “Este, 
precor, memores qua sitis stirpe creati’,—and Dante’s Inferno xxvi:118. The MS writes 
thom instead of thou. 

66. The MS writes Hastow thou not, etc. 

67. not fair. I do not find this apparently modern locution in Chaucer, but it occurs 
a number of times in Lydgate; see ResonandSens 1448, FaPrinces i:2624, 4171, iv :2148, etc. 

79, 80, 81. These are in the MS arranged as 80, 81, 79, with scribal marks for transposition. 


TRANSLATION OF PALLADIUS 


PROLOGUE 


In this original prologue prefixed to the Palladius-translation, the author’s business is 
almost entirely praise of his patron Gloucester. With it compare Hoccleve’s praise of the duke, 
Dialogue lines 532-616, Lydgate’s prologue to FaPrinces 373-420 and his Epithalamium, also 
his Letter to the duke; cp. the Libel of English Policy 250-51, the extract from Hardyng’s 
Chronicle 49-50. 

The prologue is heavy with “rhetorical color”. Observe not only the internal rime in 
single verses, but the linking of stanza by phrase-echo. Such technique is much more elabo- 
rate, but less pleasing, than that of the Lover’s Mass (see p. 211 here), or of parts of 
Chaucer’s Anelida. Necessarily the poet has difficulty in fitting speech to such a form, 
and is driven to twist syntax or force the senses of words. Thus, in line 8 he says “To rade 
error from my balade and do Pallade [so as] to glade his excellence”,—i.e., Gloucester. And at 
the opening the sense apparently is:—“The All-Creator of creatures chose to establish agri- 
culture (and set it) to endure in nature and in art; and (that Creator chose) to assign duke 
Humphrey his part in each respect, adding honor so great that we see the duke as flower 
of princes.” In the second stanza the opening phrase “His excellence’ is the object of 
extende in line 14; and I take “Thy Providence” as its subject :—‘“Thy Providence so chooses 
to extend his excellence.” 

16. an ace. For this and for the ace apoynt of line 17 I can offer little. The author 
himself considers it necessary to explain the second phrase. The ace, especially the ambes-as 
or double ace, was the lowest cast at dice, consequently, a failure. Regarding apoynt I can 
suggest only the rare Old French use of apointer to mean “deceive, ensnare”. 

18. Read with period after honde; the two and a half lines following are a question. 

22. lame is used by Transition writers to mean “inadequate, imperfect”. Cp. Chaucer’s 
Troilus ii:17. There is a full stop at the end of the line. 

23. By myghtiest the poet probably means the great nobles and Churchmen of the 
time. We may note that at this moment, ca. 1440, Gloucester’s power and influence were on 
the wane, whether this translator knew it or not. 

28. I read with stop at end of the line. 


PAGE 204] PALLADIUS 463 


29. the Sapient secounde. Apparently the translator says that the lieutenant or “second” 
to all-sapient God is found in Gloucester. This is no more extreme than his declaration in 
book i:1194, also of Gloucester, 

But God me semeth best thou mayst resemble 
ffor verite Iustice and mansuetude. 


The use of secounde is not infrequent in Middle English; e.g., Troilus is termed 
“Hector the secounde” in Lydgate’s Troy Book ii:288, iv:2344, following Chaucer’s Troilus 
ii:158, v:834-40; and Chaucer is following Guido delle Colonne. In FaPrinces iv :3961, 
Arsinoe is called “Venus the seconde”. 

31. founde means to test, try, learn by experience. 

35-37. “To see whose virtue and to do pleasure to it’, etc., many “have resorted with 
great honor and gifts”. 

37, 38. “And some under this flower (i.e. Gloucester) are here.” The translator is appar- 
ently working at one of Gloucester’s castles; in 102-3 the men alluded to are members of 
Gloucester’s household. See introduction ante. 

42. Full stop at end of the line. Lines 43-47 are all interrogative. 

43. The duc periure, the perjured duke, i.e., Philip of Burgundy, who after supporting 
for some years the English claim to the French crown, at length abandoned that position and 
threw his influence for the French king. A Flemish force under Burgundy invested Calais 
and its English garrison in 1436. Gloucester, who had been made Lieutenant of Calais in the 
preceding year, crossed the Channel with an English force; but the Burgundian army was 
already in retreat, and after ravaging some Burgundian territory Gloucester returned to 
England to meet an enthusiastic popular welcome. Cp. a poem jeering at the craven Flemings, 
included in one version of the Brut, or English Chronicle——see ed. of the Brut for EETS 
1906-08, ii:582. MacCracken has ascribed this poem to Lydgate. Cp. the undoubted Lydgate 
poem, Horse Goose and Sheep, 413-420. 

50. kouthe pike him fro, could get any advantage over him. In Chaucer’s Legend 2467, 
“And piked of her al the good he mighte”, the word means literally “robbed”, but this use 
seems more like the modern colloquial ‘get any change out of him’. 

51. Sharp or Wawe,—if they had a happy time with the law!—In 1431 John Scharpe 
of Wigmoreland created a commotion by distributing bills in London, Coventry, Oxford, and 
other towns, against the great possessions of the clergy and suggesting their appropriation 
to help the poor. Gloucester, who was at the time Protector during the king’s absence in 
France, arrested Scharpe and several others, who were all hanged or beheaded. See the 
Annales Monast. S. Albani, ed. 1870, 1:63; see Proceed. Privy Council iv: 89,99,107. In 1427 
one William Wawe, who had attacked and robbed a nunnery near St. Albans, was tried 
before Gloucester in London as a heretic and outrager of the Church, and was hanged. 

The insistence upon these facts by this translator and by Lydgate (see p. 163 here) may 
show Gloucester’s wish to keep alive the popular idea of him as champion of the Church; cp. 
introduction above. 

52-53. These lines present difficulty. Liddell states that against 52 is in the margin a 
cross; as this was the usual scribe’s note of a correction to be made, and as at present 
the rime here is over-rich, Liddell substitutes for the unto of 52 the word undo and puts 
a following comma. His paraphrase of 52 would then probably be: “(Say) if right was 
found undone in all this land”; but 53 remains difficult. Did we retain the unto of 52 we 
might paraphrase the two lines: “(Say) if right was found in all this land until he put 
his hand to the rudder to govern it.” But either there or with the rime-change it is necessary 
to explain the apparent plural-form doon with a singular subject. 

57. Read question or exclamation after sothe. 

60. and Orliaunce ennoye. In 1439 the Beaufort party, always antagonistic to Glou- 
cester, pressed strongly for a peace with France and for liberation of the duke of Orléans, 
a prisoner since Agincourt. Gloucester opposed both moves, but the liberation of Orléans 
was decided on, despite a formal and weighty protest from Gloucester, for which see 
Rymer’s Foedera x :764-767 or Vickers’ life of the duke, pp. 264-65. His arguments, which 


464 NOTES [PAGE 204 


of course stressed the dying commands of Henry the Fifth, aroused so much popular feeling 
that they were answered by the other Lords of Council in the name of the boy-king; see 
Stevenson, Letters and Papers ii:451-60, Vickers, op. cit. p. 267. Orléans was set free 
in Nov. 1440; and when, on the preceding Aug. 28, he took solemn public oath never to move 
against the English king, Gloucester left Westminster Abbey and the ceremony and went 
direct to his post in South Wales. It thus seems probable not only that “Orliaunce ennoye” 
refers to Humphrey’s efforts to prevent the French duke’s liberation, but that this transla- 
tion if supervised by Gloucester, must antedate August 1440 as well as postdate November 
1439 and the first gift of books to Oxford. 

68. hem connect. Liddell punctuates with a semicolon after connect and period after 
enclude, line 67 running over into 68. The translator seems to have been led by his closing 
phrase in 64, “al vertu is”, to start his next stanza with a definition of virtus. He may be 
using for it a Latin source, which I have not identified; and his adoption of the word intellect 
drives him to a somewhat unusual group of rime-words, connect, confect, provect. I might 
paraphrase: “If mercy (piety?) be adorned with knowledge, (and if) fear of the Lord hold 
them connected together.” ’ 

72. Pause after werkis; the rest of the line is an interrogation. 

73. felyng. Here and in line 91 this word apparently means “to grasp mentally’. See 
Libel 188. See also Walton’s Boethius, v prose 4:145, “As be exsaumple myght pou feelen 
yit”. In 91 the word is glossed sentiunt by the scribe, while the fele of 89 is glossed plures. 
We may paraphrase the awkward stanza: “Another testing so the philosopher in books of 
natural philosophy, as is physics; so prompt also to proffer metaphysic, or each art quadrivial ; 
and who hath the practical with the theoretical” etc. A description of Gloucester is intended. 

76. quadriuial. The quadrivium joined with the trivium to make the seven liberal arts; 
it included Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy, while the trivium (see 79, 80) in- 
cluded Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. See the Court of Sapience, or Hawes’ Pastime of 
Pleasure, from among countless medieval works on the Seven Liberal Arts.—practic With 
theoric. See notes on Dance Macabre 427, on Walton A 332; see Confessio Amantis vii: 
1499 ff., 1649 ff. 

78. Politic, etc. In an explanatory Latin comment near the opening of the Court of 
Sapience, we read that “Policia” is, according to Aristotle, Arnulphus, Kilwardby, and Isidor, 
to be divided into monastic, economic, and civil or politic. Monastic deals with the adminis- 
tration of the individual, economic with that of the household, politic with that of the subjects 
in a state. See Gower as cited above, and Macaulay’s note, vol. iii, p. 522. 

82. al thorgh se,—‘to see (understand) philosophy thoroughly”. 

86-88. This stanza apparently says that acquired knowledge is a high possession, that 
natural gifts are no small endowment, and that it is a proper procedure to depend upon 
“tresor” if a wise use of the science of physiognomy judge each organ and feature. The 
pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta Secretorum devotes a long section to physiognomy; but the 
exact force of tresor I cannot interpret, unless it refers to the Secreta itself,—see Lydgate’s 
translation, line 592. 

89. At Oxenford etc. Gloucester made two princely gifts of books to the University 
of Oxford, one in November 1439, the second in February 1443. His first donation, of 129 
volumes, was sent in answer to an appeal from the scantily-equipped University; the delivery 
was made by Master Gilbert Kymer and by Ralph Drew. The second gift, of 135 volumes, 
was delivered by Master William Say and Ralph Drew. The University acknowledged the 
donations with warm gratitude, drew up lists of the books, and provided for their storage 
in a “cista trium philosophiarum et septem scientiarum liberalium”, whence they might be 
borrowed by Masters under special indenture. Annual masses were to be said for Gloucester 
and for his consort forever, etc. 

These lists are printed by Anstey in his Munimenta Academica, 1868, ii1:758-772; but 
there is nothing either there or in the Epistolae Academicae Oxon., 1898, to indicate that the 
duke equipped an University reading-room with desks. A letter from the University to 
Humphrey, after the first gift, speaks of the need for a larger reading-room because of the 


PAGE 205] PALLADIUS 465 


increased number of readers; but Humphrey, says Vickers, p. 406-7, seems to have ignored 
the hint. 

The recurrent They, these other, They, mark out different classes of readers. There are 
pauses after methaphisic, line 91, and natural, line 92. With 89 the stanza-linking ceases, 
also the internal rime-echo; there are reappearances of the latter in 107, 117, 123, 124. 

93. “Here (close) by is theology to be met with.” 

102-104. These men must have presented their works to Gloucester before this transla- 
tion was executed in 1440. Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Albans and counsellor of Gloucester 
in literary matters, is praised by Lydgate in St. Albon and Amphabell (done to Whetham- 
stede’s order) for his “gaye librarye” and for his scholarly industry. He compiled a Gran- 
arium, or De Viris Illustribus, which Lydgate mentions, and which appears in the 1443 list 
of Gloucester’s gifts to Oxford. The work still exists, part 1 in Brit. Mus. Cotton 
Nero C vi; part 2 in Cotton Tiberius D v, very badly damaged by fire; part 4 in Brit. Mus. 
Adds. 26764. Pers de Mounte, Peter de Monte of Venice, dedicated to Gloucester his treatise 
De virtutum et vitiorum inter se differentia, which is probably meant by the next to the last 
entry of the 1443 list, “De vitiorum inter se”. Titus is Titus Livius of Friuli, an Italian and 
Gloucester’s resident poet, who wrote a Latin life of Henry the Fifth at the duke’s command. 
Anthony is Antonio da Beccaria of Verona, Gloucester’s secretary, who translated at his 
master’s order several theological treatises by Athanasius. Capgrave the prior of Lynn in 
Norfolk is not here mentioned; he dedicated to Gloucester his commentary on Genesis, which 
is in the 1443 list. Upton is not mentioned, nor Lydgate, but they both translated into Eng- 
lish, which may have seemed negligible to our author except in his own case. 

104. There is a pause after least. 

109. taught me metur make. How to estimate this curious and important statement we 
are not certain. The management of rhythm in the body of the translation is so good, and 
the text so careful of e-final, that a strict supervision over it is obvious. Such a super- 
vision, by Gloucester himself, is asserted in the January and February epilogue-stanzas, here 
printed; but how far the duke was responsible for the sound and competent rhythm we do 
not and cannot know. Certainly no amount of correction could have put the management 
of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes on a par with this. The flourished trickery of the prologue 
gives no real idea of this translator’s ability to cope with his main problem, which he handles 
easily and well. 

111-112. Compare the Lover’s Mass 115 ff. 

113-16. The translator’s personal grievance breaks into expression, but is quickly curbed. 
Nothing is known of the circumstances, nor can be until the translator is identified. The late 
E. W. B. Nicholson, Bodley’s Librarian, suggested John Walton; but the ability of the two 
men in handling difficult Latin is the only point of similarity to be noted. 


PALLADIUS: EPILOGUE-STANZAS 


A 


1. A now, Ah now! Liddell suggests “And now”. 

2. crossis make, to make crosses, the recognized method of indicating, in the margin, the 
need for correction in the text. These crosses are sometimes lightly scratched, sometimes in 
faint crayon or ink easy of erasure. 

3. plummet. Whether the implement used by Gloucester was the egg-shaped pointed 
plummet of lead, such as a surveyor carries today, or a sort of crayon pencil, cannot be 
determined. See Garland 1075 and note 1074 ibid. 

4. straunge eschaunge, strangely altered. 

5. no leue I take, i.e., I slip away quietly. 

6. do forth, continue? This line is puzzling. Does the author first withdraw quaking 
and then submit himself? 


466 NOTES [PAGE 206 


B 


6. by what, etc. Liddell reads this ‘Ey what” etc., that is, “Ah, what have I to do?” This 
gives better sense and a more dramatic meaning. A question mark is then to be understood 
after correcte, and after done. 

7. In this line, in A 4 above, and previously, note how the scribe indicates a new sentence, 
in mid-line, by a capital. In C 6, however, the capital means the Deity. 


Cc 


1. “And here I find an end sooner than I thought.” 

2. “(What) art taught before is finished this month.” 

4. “That chose to be born of one for every one.” 

6-8. The last sentence of this stanza begins either with Ay or with line 7; there is 
a comma-pause after make. “So bear up thy prince’s deeds from darkness, while I set to 
work at May.” 


D 


3-4. “I see my guide far ahead, and I follow him, although I do not attempt to be as 
swift as he.” 

5. o god allone. Liddell suggests of God allone, the reading of the Oxford MS. 

6. “O hope, free of drop of sin or fraud.” 


THE LOVER’S MASS 


5. Cytheron. This may be the mountain, or may be Venus,—Cytherea. See note FaPrinces 
K 51; see Burgh 7 and note. 

15-40. Compare the “confession” of Troilus, in Chaucer’s poem ii:523 ff., and see Root’s 
(522) note in his edition of the poem. 

53. The is miswritten by the scribe, for Ther? 

56. Genius. This name is given to the mystagogue of Nature, or “prélat Venérien”, in 
Alanus’ De Planctu Naturae, prose ix, in the Roman de la Rose, in the Confessio Amantis, 
in Lydgate’s Reson and Sensuality 6623, 6677, in his Troy Book iv:6975-6, in Lemaire de 
Belges’ Concorde des deux Langages, in Marot’s Temple de Cupido. See Spenser, Faerie 
Queene ii:12, 47, ii1:6, 31. 

57-72. The Officium is a roundel, i., a poem of unequally tripartite structure on two 
rimes, repeating its opening lines in two other positions in the poem. Scribes often write 
only the first word or two of the repeated lines, as here. 

The roundel was originally a French “rondet de carole’, or lyric sung in dance. Roundels 
appear inserted into thirtenth-century romances, eg., the Cléomades 5497-5504, 5513-20; 
and thereafter they developed as an independent literary form, in various lengths according 
to the number of thematic lines. Roundels occur in earlier English at the close of Chaucer’s 
Parlement of Foules, in Lydgate’s Entry of Henry VI into London and in his Pedigree of 
Henry VI, at close. Four by Hoccleve are printed here pp. 67, 68; a roundel to Fortune, 
with Lydgate’s Pedigree-roundel, is printed by Ritson, Ancient Songs i:128-9; and Lydgate’s 
first roundel above mentioned is discussed by Schleich, Archiv 96:193. All these, except 
perhaps the Fortune-roundel, were intended for singing; and the employment of the roundel- 
form in this part of the Mass should be noted. Three roundels, entitled Merciles Beaute, 
are printed by Skeat i:387-8 with the work of Chaucer; they are preserved in one MS 
only, without mark of authorship. 

The earl of Suffolk has left several roundels written in French; see print by MacCracken 
in PMLA 26:142 ff. English translations of several roundels by the duke of Orléans are 
printed in, this volume, pp. 221-3, 231-2. 

74-97. In these Kyrie stanzas two “rhetorical colors’ are employed, internal rime and 
stanza-linking. Internal rime was twice used by Chaucer in his Anelida, in groups of nine 
verses, 272-8, 332-41; and we find similar nine-line stanzas at the close of Douglas’ Palice 
of Honour. Here the stanza is of eight verses, the internal rime changing with each 
verse; but in the three eight-line stanzas at the close of Henryson’s Prayer for the Pest, 


PAGE 212] THE LOVER’S MASS 467 


in a stanza closing part ii of the Palladius-translation, and in one strophe of the Song of 
Lust in Barclay’s Ship of Fools (ii:290), the rime-management differs each time. Palladius 
and Henryson both construct the stanza ababbcbc, but while Henryson shifts his (often three- 
fold) internal rime with every line, Palladius uses a twofold b-rime within his a-lines and an 
a-rime within his b-lines. Barclay, changing his internal rime with each verse, builds his 
stanza aabbaabb. None of these is therefore exactly parallel to the stanza as constructed here 
or to the Anelida-stanza; but their common refusal of the Anelida-stanza of nine lines, which 
is reproduced by Douglas, is noteworthy. The use of internal rime by Dunbar in part of 
each stanza of his Ballat to Our Lady, when taken with this general divergence from the 
Chaucerian model, indicates that not so much Chaucer as a known rhetorical device was 
in the minds of these post-Chaucerian versifiers, who each varied to suit himself. 

A brief treatment of medial or “leonine” rime is in the Laborintus, see Faral, p. 362. 

The enchaining of stanzas, by phrase, word, or rime, has a longer history. It is found, 
in English, in Laurence Minot, in the Pearl, in Sir Perceval of Galles, in the archetype of 
the Awnters of Arthur, in various poems of MS Harl 2253 as ed. in Boddeker’s Altenglische 
Dichtungen, etc. Italian, Provencal, and early French poets use the device; see, e.g. the 19th 
canzone of Guittone d’Arezzo; see Butler’s Forerunners of Dante nos. i, xiii, xxii, xlv; see 
Naetebus, pp. 143-4, 164, 174, 181-2. Lydgate makes an attempt at it in Black Knight 217-45. 
A reduced form of stanza-linking, by rime only, is employed by Barclay in the Tower of 
Virtue poem inserted into his fourth eclogue; see p. 330 here. For a modern example see 
Alfred Perceval Graves’ ‘““When Adam’s eyes childwise.” 

123. For this thought see Troilus i1:950-52, 111:1060-62; see Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick 
81-85; see Dunbar’s Of the Changes of Life; see Orléans’ poem “Aftir wynter the veer with 
foilys grene”’. Cp. the Palladius-prologue, line 112 here. And see Matthew of Venddme’s lines 
from the Tobias 457-8 :— 


Flores post hiemem, post absinthim risum 
Praestas post lacrimas, post tenebrosa iubar. 


146. With the Epistle cp. such addresses to the “fedeli d’Amor”, or initiates of love, 
as in Dante’s Vita Nuova. For a contact between the pilgrim-simile here and in Boccaccio’s 
De Casibus bk. iii see the introduction to this poem; and for the text of Laurent’s transla- 
tion of Boccacio at this point see the note to FaPrinces C 92. 

151. Read with comma after Joye. 

155. use a maner to reste on ther wey. Laurent has “ont de coustume de soy arrester”. 

157. alleggen ther wery lemys. Laurent has “aleger le corps’. 

160-1. somme ... vsen to gadren wyne. Can this be a misunderstanding of Laurent’s 
“prendre le vent fres et souef”? Is vent taken as vin? The next clause, in both Laurent and 
Lydgate, treats of water and wine-drinking. 

159. asswage. This is the earliest NED case of this word in this sense, Lydgate being 
treated as the author. He uses it frequently in the Troy Book and the FaPrinces. 

160. how myche they ha passyd. Laurent has ‘‘combien ils ont fait”; the FaPrinces iii:112 
has “whiche thei ha passyd”. The French continues “apres ce quilz ont tourne le dos a 
aucun notable seteys dont ils se sont partis’. The passage is loosely and verbosely rendered 
in the FaPrinces, but Lydgate seems to understand the French, which this writer does not 
follow. 

165. entytlen hem, make notes on, keep'a journal. This seems a reflexive use, but is 
not so recognized by the NED. See a non-reflexive use in FaPrinces ix:1885, and a half- 
score of cases in Lydgate’s Secrees, also non-reflexive. 

167. Lydgate in the FaPrinces omits rivers and sea from his list. 

184-5. The holy legende of Martyrs of Cupydo. The Legend of Good Women, so called 
in the Man of Law’s prologue, includes women only. The author says that after noting the 
fidelity of Troilus, the truth of Penelope, the purity of Polyxena, the generous trust of 
Dido, he often read this holy legend, also the story of Tristram and Isolde, and the meagre 
rewards of Palamides. In Lydgate’s Black Knight 330, Palamides the unsuccessful lover 


468 NOTES [PAGE 221 


of Isolde is mentioned, and two stanzas given to him. Tristram is one name of a list, ibid., 
366. Tristram and Isolde are mentioned in Lydgate’s Temple of Glass 77-79, in the PoFoules 
290, in the Confessio vi:471, viii: 2500. 

The notion of ‘martyrs of Cupid” was general. Charles of Orléans, ed. d’Héricault 
i:24, says that he ought to be called martyr, “Se Dieu d’Amours fait nulz amoureux saints”; 
and Villon in his Petit Testament 47-8 said “ie suis amant martir, Du nombre des amoureux 
sains.” 


CHARLES D’ORLEANS 


A. POEMS WRITTEN IN ENGLISH 


Of these eleven poems, ten are rondeaux and one (IX) is written in stanza. The 
rondel or rondeau, a favorite French courtly verse-form, is a short poem of unequally tri- 
partite structure, which repeats its opening line or lines in two other positions in the poem, 
one being at close. See note on Mass 57. 

The first two of these poems appear together on one page of the “autograph” MS, a 
page which according to Champion is in the hand of Charles himself. Hence the use of 
the Northern rune p in 1:9, I1:1, 4, 9, is noteworthy when compared with the Grenoble MS’ 
your instead of by in I1:1, 4 (1 cite from Champollion-Figeac’s edition, not from the MS, 
unseen by me.) The Grenoble scribe, or his editor, also expanded final e-flourishes to er in 
some cases, but in yet more cases rendered it as -ing. Those English texts are otherwise 
defaced by a great number of misunderstandings and miswritings, some of which are 
emended by MacCracken, who however leaves standing the cryst of 1:5, the tho fy of II:11. 


I 


Printed by Champollion-Figeac, p. 269, from the Grenoble MS; reprinted by Sauerstein, 
pp. 65-6, by MacCracken, PMLA 26:177. It was printed from a Bibl.Nat.MS by Mlle. 
de Keralio, and reprinted from her by Walpole, as cited p. 216 here. Keralio’s principal 
differences from the present text are: thys message (1), plesant (2), im leed (3), all yat 
(9), and in line 4 clenching instead of Jettyng. She reads this viage in line 11. 

MacCracken emends of tymys (11) to ofttym y; but the line as here has both sense and 
syntax, agreeing with the construction of line 10. MacCracken retains the (Grenoble) foly- 
wing of 12, though removing an excrescent -ing from earlier lines. 

For the theme of the poem cp. d’Héricault’s ed. of Charles, 1:37, 39, 59; all of these 
exist in English translation, see the Roxburghe Club print of Brit. Mus. Harley 682, pp. 
38, 44, 66. The French of the last-mentioned opens “Mon cueur est devenu hermite En 
lermitage de Pensée.” Cp. lines 9, 10 here. 


II 


Printed by Champollion-Figeac, pp. 269-70; repr. by Bullrich, by MacCracken, loc. cit., 
177-8. It was printed by Mlle. de Keralio and repr. from her by Walpole, as above p. 216 
Keralio’s variants are thows (1, 2, 9 etc.), hope y viage (1), of my message (4); she omits 
is (12), writes yat y in 9, and renders 5 as “Us hat that had letting of thy passage’. This 
is obviously a misreading of W to Us. Neither the Grenoble nor this MS writes the W; 
MacCracken emends to Wher that hyt be etc. 

The Grenoble MS otherwise abounds in errors. The word taryd is each time written 
carydge; blake (12) is written clake; nay (10) is written way; and line 11, soundly pre- 
Served in de Keralio’s text, is given as “And tho fy syngling et dauns or lagh and play”. 
MacCracken leaves tho fy unrectified; thof is however a by-form of though, see no. xix below. 
In line 9 Grenoble omits the initial T of Thow; MacCracken emends to Who. 

For the theme of the poem cp. d’Héricault’s ed. of Charles, ii:22, 54. Neither of these 
poems is translated in MS Harley 682. 

III 


Printed in Champollion-Figeac’s ed. of Charles, p. 265; repr. by MacCracken, loc. cit., 
pp. 174-5. 


PAGE 221] CHARLES D’ORLEANS 469 


The use of the rune in line 1, and in the next poem lines 4, 10, 11, should be noted 
with Champion’s statement, of. cit., p. 47, that pp. 299-314 of the “autograph” MS are the 
work of an English scribe. If this be so, the writing of guippe for keep in IV A 6 is 
peculiar. 

IV A 

Printed by Champollion-Figeac, p. 266; repr. by MacCracken, loc. cit., p. 175. 

The reading guippe for keep in line 6 is apparently an ear-error, as is do wel for dwel 
in line 10. Both appear also in the Grenoble MS printed by Champollion. 


IV B 


Printed by Ellis, Specimens of Early Engl. Poets, i:253; in the London Magazine for 
1823, pp. 301-6; printed by Costello, Specimens of the Early Poetry of France, 1835, p. 138; 
printed by Sauerstein, p. 64. 

In this Royal text the roundel-form is muddled, lines 4 and 5 run together. The 
word kepe (5) appears in its proper form; line 7 has undergone miswritings which are eye- 
errors, J must being rendered Iniust, and hertles as helis. If the archetype indicated the 
er of hertles by the usual flourish, this latter error would be easy. 


Vv 


Printed by Champollion-Figeac, pp. 266-7; repr. MacCracken, loc. cit., pp. 175-6. 

The French editor has tvewe in line 2, serve instead of sume in line 6, and Thousches 
at opening of line 8. 

The poem is clumsily expressed, but apparently says that after a half-year of waiting 
and a time of endured disdain, an embrace is a jewel full dear: but that the lover must be 
on the alert against a ?jealous guardian. The phrase fore against, line 11, is first cited 
by NED from the year 1494, with the meaning “directly opposite, facing”. 

The rune again appears, line 11. 


VI 


Printed by Champollion-Figeac, pp. 266-7; repr. MacCracken Joc. cit., pp. 175-6. 

This roundel contains in its line-initials the name Anne Molins, a fact pointed out by 
me in ModPhil 22:215. In Romania 49:580 ff., M. Pierre Champion published an interest- 
ing passage from King Réné’s Cuer d’Amours Espris (cited above p. 220), which says that 
Charles learned English while a prisoner, from a lady to whom he paid court and addressed 
poems. As the duke undoubtedly had social intercourse with his various English gaolers, he 
may well have met a daughter of the house of Molyneux; she may have been in the train of 
a greater lady, just as the damsels to whom Skelton addresses the lyrics of his Garland 
of Laurell were associated with the countess of Surrey. The family of Molyneux or 
Moleyns was an ancient and dignified house; its most conspicuous figure was Adam de 
Moleyns, bishop of Chichester and keeper of the Privy Seal, who died in 1450. His connec- 
tions with French affairs were many, and he was more than once associated in diplomatic 
business with the earl of Suffolk, who was for four years Charles’ guardian. De Moleyns 
was of the Lancashire branch of the family; his sister Katharine was duchess of Norfolk; 
of another sister, Anne, nothing is recorded; his brother’s daughter Anne became the wife 
of Sir Richard Nevil. 

Champollion-Figeac prints let have have in line 6, a vende in line 8; MacCracken emends 
to let hym have,—an ende. The latter phrase may however mean “a turning”. The French 
editor has line 10 as here; MacCracken omits not. In line 11, the word hys is perhaps the 
verb hies, “hastens” ? 

Vil 

Printed by Champollion-Figeac, p. 267-8, repr. by MacCracken, loc. cit., p. 176. 

The French editor writes puyd for payd in line 1, nuans for auans in line 3, fraichyedness 
in line 4, Ye go for Ys go in line 10. 


470 NOTES [PAGE 222 


VIII 
Printed by Champollion-Figeac, pp. 267-8, repr. by MacCracken, loc. cit., pp. 176-7. 


IX 


Printed by Champollion-Figeac, pp. 268-9; printed by MacCracken, loc. cit., pp. 160-61, 
from the MS Bodl. Fairfax 16 fol. 321, where the stanzas form one of a group of English 
amatory poems, for which MacCracken suggests the earl of Suffolk as author. On this hypo- 
thesis, the poem would have been preserved in Charles’ “album” as so many other poems by his 
fellow-versifiers were preserved. And it is to be noted that its form and flow differ sharply 
from those of Charles’ rondeaux here printed. 

The “autograph” and the Grenoble MSS agree in some textual differences from the Fair- 
fax copy. They read to se fro in line 2, where Fairfax reads to and fro; they read Me thyng 
in line 8, where Fairfax reads Me thynk; they read wehout in line 10, where Fairfax reads 
wythout; they read makyth alwey in line 18, where Fairfax reads makyth now; they write 
sykyrvenes, sykyrnenes in line 20, where Fairfax writes sykernes. 

In line 16 Fairfax has no the; in line 19 it writes wost. The French editor’s text shows 
worst in line 19, omits J from line 5, and has other divergences. 


x 


Printed by Ellis 1:253; in the London Magazine and in Costello as under IV B above. 
Printed by Champollion-Figeac, p. 455, repr. by Bullrich, op. cit. Printed by MacCracken, loc. 
cit., p. 178; printed by Sauerstein, p. 65. 

XI 

Printed as is no. X, omitting Costello. 

Ellis suggested Be ware in line 1 instead of Ne were, an emendation incorporated into the 
London Magazine text. The com smert of line 5 is possibly con (can) smert; for And in 
line 8, read An, ie., If. 


B. TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES’ FRENCH 


XII 


Printed in the Roxburghe Club ed. of these translations, pp. 36-7. 

1. As mot, etc. The use of as with the imperative to express a wish is very frequent 
in Middle English. Cp. KnTale 1444, MillTale 591, MLTale 761, Troilus ii:1025, etc. 

11. wrappid & wounde. See ClTale 527, PoFoules 670-71. 

18. hir hit mevyng, urging on her the fact that, etc. 

ZA MOpMeneHalattle 

26. Of which, i. e., “From whom’. 

29-30. lennuy is omitted in transl. Supply al? 

With the poem cp. Pope’s Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, lines 51 ff. 


XIII 


Printed in the Roxburghe Club edition, pp. 62-3. 

5. Whi dost thou straunge, “Why art thou distant, aloof’? See Chaucer, PoFoules 
584, Troilus ii:1660, Skelton’s Garland 444, etc. 

8. The scribe has marked ben for erasure and put Jeve in the margin. 

10. ynough is pronounced to rime with how, i., as enow. This w-form is the old 
plural of the word, an archaism in Modern English. 

15. to iape not lustith me, “it is not my intention to jest’. 

19. as hast, i.e., thus hast. See xv:15 below. 

22. The second on is written over an erasure. 

28. ffor werry may be understood as a single word, the verb forweary, to become ex- 
hausted. “They may (mowe) grow weary in the lady’s company in no respect.” Or, for 
may be the conjunction. The use of Jo as a line-filler is very frequent in this translator; 


PAGE 225] CHARLES D’ORLEANS 471 


note Chaucer’s Troilus i:397, 845, ii:255, 1433, 1633, 1743, iii1:1341, iv:284, 1231, 1319, 
v:54, 127, 461, 704, 1828. 
XIV 


Printed in the Roxburghe Club edition, pp. 74-5. Printed in Park’s 1806 ed. of Walpole 
(see p. 217 here) 1:184-85. 

The -ir and -ay rimes of the French are retained as -er and -ay, -cy. 

4. at wode, to the wood. geder may, gather the appropriate Mayday green branches or 
flowers. See Knight’s Tale 654. 

Ub Right as the wood, etc. See Chaucer’s PoFoules 493, Lydgate’s Black Knight 46. 

8. first day of may. See note on xvii below. 

13. affoyle. Neither the NED, Godefroy, nor Cotgrave gives this word. The sense of 
“beleave”, i e. to adorn with leaves, lies very near, cp. foille, fueille, leaf. Cotgrave has the 
substantive foyle as the setting of precious stones, the mounting of a mirror, etc.:—our word 
foil. In such latter case, this word might be a coinage for metre, such as apast in xvi:9, 
a word used also in the romances.—trees. Scanned disyllabic? Cp. PoFoules 173, Prol. CT 
607. 

15. Note the French, and the position of to after its case; see xix:20 below. 

17. on whi. Read and whi? 

19. Here absent is probably a transitive verb; “doth remove, keep away, thy lady from 
thee”. 

20. That, i. e., who, refers to thee, to the lover. 


XV 


Printed in the Roxburghe Club edition pp. 87-88. 

With this outcry against Death cp. Chaucer's BoDuchesse 475-83; see Floris and 
Blanchefleur 281 ff.; see Machaut’s motet printed by Chichmaref ii:487; see Villon’s rondeau 
“Mort, iappelle de ta rigueur”, in von Wurzbach’s edition, p. 100; see Pugliese’s ‘‘Morte, perche 
m’ai fatte si gran guerra”, in Butler’s Forerunners of Dante or in Monaci, p. 92. The ring 
of the Floris and Blanchefleur bit is much nearer Boethius (see lines A 277-80 of Walton) 
than is this purely court-poem. Note the treatment of the French rime-sounds. 

11. fflowryng in youthe. A stock phrase. See Lydgate’s St. Margaret 439; and for 
similar phrase ‘“Flouryng in vertu” see ibid., 96, FaPrinces iii:3165, etc.; the phrase “flouryng 
age” occurs often in this period. 

14. Had is altered from hadest, and after taken a word is erased, apparently yet. 
unweldynes is the inactivity of age. Gower in the Confessio vii:1855 uses unwelde as the op- 
posite of deliver; Lydgate, FaPrinces i1:2259, uses weeldi as equivalent to deliver, “active”. 
For the phrase “vnweldy croked age” see Scogan’s Moral Balade line 145, in Skeat vii :242; 
see Lydgate’s FaPrinces i:1686, 2127, iii:5117, etc.; and cp. Romaunt of the Rose 4886, etc. 

15. As had, i.e. “So had’. See above, xiii:19. 

16. take shows an erased n. 

17. this is written over an erasure. 

19, Alone ... wtout compane. The phrase “seul sans compaignie” occurs also in Orléans’ 
twelfth ballade, see ed. by d’Héricault 1:26. Machaut, in his Dit dou Lyon 182, speaks of 
walking “Par le vergier sans compaignie”; Christine de Pisan in her poem Seulete, ed. SATF 
i:12, has as line 3, “Seulete suy, sanz compaignon ne maistre”’. The phrase “seus sans com- 
paignie’ appears in Venus la Déesse, quatrain 229, (see ed. Foerster, Bonn, 1880). Cp. 
Bartsch’s Chrestomathy of Old French, 11th ed., pp. 146, 151, 231, 262. Dante, Inferno 
23:1, says that he and Virgil were “soli e senza compagnia’’; cp. his Vita Nuova, section 
12, line 6 of its ballata. Petrarch, In Vita 135, line 6 (canzone 18), describes “un augel... 
sol, senza consorte”’; cp. ibid. 106, line 4. Chaucer uses the phrase three times, KnTale 
1921, MillTale 18, Melibeus 2749-50. In Gower’s Confessio iii:1220 we find “Solein with- 
oute compaignie” applied to Diogenes. The Old Eng. Dream of the Rood 123-4 has “paer 
ic ana waes Maete werode”. Hawes employs the phrase in his Pastime 1938, (p. 78 of the 
Percy Soc. edition). 


472 NOTES [PAGE 227 


Here and in line 25 the wi of without has been erased. 
25. im is inserted above the line. 
30. The is of offensis has been erased. 


XVI 


Printed in the Roxburghe Club edition, pp. 94-5. 

With the opening cp. Shakespeare’s sonnet xxx. 

1. The Paris MS of the French reads souuenir instead of souuent. 

2. This MS very frequently writes tayne for twayne, as here. See the repetition in 
line 7, and cp. “thir goodely eyen twoo” of Lydgate’s New Year poem, pr. Anglia 32:190 ff., 
line 46. 

3. myn hert. Read hertis, but note the French. 

8. Note the padding but even for rhythm, and cp. O welaway of line 6 for rime. 

11. The English omits Yseult and adds Dido and Alceste, probably with reminiscence 
of Chaucer. 

17. Death is feminine in the French, where line 19 ends “s’elle pouoit”. Notice the skil- 
ful amplification of the English in this stanza, but the twist of “Hors du monde” to another 
purpose. 

27. “unless it should improve’? “even though it should improve”? 


XVII 


Printed in the Roxburghe Club edition, pp. 99-100. 

1. The secund day, etc. The three opening days of May were those of the festival. It 
is on “Mayes day the thridde” that Pandarus feels love’s pain, Troilus ii:56. The Cuckoo 
and Nightingale is timed on “the thridde night of may”, line 55. In Octovien de St. Gelais’ 
Séjour d’Honneur the hero embarks with Sensuality on his voyage on May 2. Orléans has 
a French ballade beginning “Le premier jour du mois de May”; transl. also into English, 
see Roxburghe Club edition, p. 97. 

2. half. ..half. The French does not say this, but that the lover was asleep. In the 
rondeau by Orléans, printed d’Héricault 11:98, is the phrase “moitié veillant”’. This was 
a medieval formula; see the opening line of La Belle Dame; see Lydgate’s PilgrLifeMan 
222. Perhaps cp. the phrase “neither living nor dead’ from Alanus down to Shelley, e. g. 
De Planctu Naturae prose 3, Dante’s Inferno 34:25, Chaucer’s Troilus iii:79, Gower’s Confessio 
1:289, Shelley’s Epipsychidion 309. 

4-8. Here is mentioned the strife of Flower and Leaf; see p. 259 here.—lo is again used 
to fill out the line. 

12. “In my clumsy fashion”, etc. Note the French. 

15-16. “But the fortune of such choice hath made me this year he who is to serve the 
Leaf.”’ Note the case of he; and read yere instead of heyre,—French “cest an”. Is it likely 
that the author of this translation himself would have written heyre? 

22. what part y am, wherever I am. 


XVIII 


Printed in the Roxburghe Club edition, pp. 105-6. Translated in the London Magazine for 
Sept. 1823, pp. 301-6. 

1. noyous. The translation is closer to the Paris than to the Royal text of the French. 
Cp. xvi:l, and the refrain line of xix. 

3. I mette. Mark the difference from Me mette in xvii:3. 

6. al be me loth, “although it displeases me’. Changed from the French for the sake 
of rime. Cp. BoDuchesse 8, Legend 1639, etc. 

15. thee see, “to see thee”. 

23. to, i.e. till—did hir day, caused her to die. 

27 is added to the French. With the picture cp. PardTale 400 ff. 


PAGE 230] CHARLES D’ORLEANS 473 


XIX 


Printed in the Roxburghe Club edition, pp. 107-9. 

Observe in this poem the rime of thought with aloft, etc. See the romance of Eger 
and Grine 261-2, Sir Isumbras 222-3, 445-6, Perceval de Galles 161-3. In the prol. to Shakes- 
peare’s Winter’s Tale, act. iv, daughter and after are rimed; in Chamberlayne’s Pharonnida, 
of 1659, such rimes as thought: soft occur. See the writing thof for though in ii:11 here; 
other cases in the Roxburghe ed. are on pp. 30, 55, 64, 75, 180, 198, 207, 221. 

1, 2. Cp. the Squire’s Tale 663, followed by Lydgate’s Troy Book i:626 and by the 
Flower and Leaf at opening; see Skelton’s Garland 1436, and the Serpent of Division, ed. 
MacCracken, p. 55,—‘“‘When pe same golden wayne of Titan... is whirlid vp’, etc.—day 
of seynt valentyn is accusative of specification—‘‘on the day”. 

6. He wook is confusing. Read Awook? See BoDuchesse 1324. 

8, 16, 24, 28. The text is nearer the Paris than the Royal version. See xvi:1, xviii:1. 

11. pletid ther latyn, pleaded in their speech. See PoFoules 495, SqTale 427,—both 
bird-passages. The word latyn or leden had come to mean “speech”. 

13. wrappe. ..soft. See the PoFoules 670. 

14. This does not render line 12 of the French, which is very close to Chaucer’s PoFoules 
491, “The noyse of foules forto ben delivred”. 

20. These birdis to, to these birds. See xiv:15. 

27. this comfort sole, “without this comfort”. French desgarny, etc. 


XX 


Printed in the Roxburghe Club edition, p. 159. This is an especially successful trans- 
lation. 
4. to lessen wt. Cp. Thebes 35, Bycorne 91, and notes, for this word-order. 


XXI 


Printed in the Roxburghe Club edition, p. 146. This poem is one of the four printed 
from Hearne’s Diaries (1712) in Anglia 17:445-7, and by Bliss as on p. 218 here. 

5. to geef, Old Eng. to giefe, “dirt cheap”. The sense is “is underrated, held cheap”. 
Note the retention of this early native idiom, and also a coinage like affoyle, xiv:13 ante. 

8. my deth...shert. See the Knight’s Tale, Troilus iii:733, Lydgate’s BlKnight 489, 
Partonope of Blois 109, etc.; also Wyatt in the poem beginning “Alas the greiff”’. 

15. y kepe, etc. “I have no desire to escape from death.” 


XXII 
Printed in the Roxburghe Club edition, p. 151. Translated by Costello as p. 219 here. 
4. Inversion for rime’s sake. 
5. but ye lust, etc. “unless you desire to give”. 


XXIII 


Printed in the Roxburghe Club edition, p. 167. 

5. ne slepen y. This seems an early case of the incorrect use of -m in the verb-singular, 
as it was later abused by, e.g., Urry in his 1721 ed. of Chaucer. See J ben in xiii:8 ante; 
and see “the greef y han” on p. 61 of the Roxburghe print, in rime; and see the 1840 ed. of Guy 
of Warwick, p. 297,—“He seemed as it weren a fend bat comen weren out of helle’. 


HARDYNG’S CHRONICLE 


THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT 


The MS, Brit. Mus, Lansdowne 204, has many marginal summaries to chapters and 
stanzas. Beside stanza 1 is: “The vij Book primum Capitulum. Henry the fyfte kynge of 
Englonde & ffraunce and lorde of Irelonde duke of Normandy Guyen & of Aungevy.” In the 
right hand margin is: “Nota quod Cronica istius Regis Henrici patet in quadam cronica 


474 NOTES [PAGE 234 


Magistri Norham doctoris Theologiae & secundum quod compilator huius libri vidit & audiuit.” 
There are English summaries beside stanzas 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc. 

2. seynt Cuthbert day, March 20. Hardyng is inaccurate. Henry IV died on March 20, 
1413, and Henry V was crowned on Passion Sunday, April 9, in a heavy snowstorm. This 
error was amended by Hardyng in later versions of the Chronicle; cp. the text of this 
stanza in the Grafton-Ellis ed. of 1812:— 


Henry his sonne that prynce of Wales was than 
On Saynt Cuthbertes day in March folowynge 
Kyng was, so as I remembre canne: 

On Passyon Sonday after was this kyng 
Anoynted and crowned without taryeng, 

The ninth daye it was of April so 

With stormes fell and haylestones greate also. 


6. obeyand. The participle here shows the Northern ending, as does fleand in 70. 

8. Cobham Errytyke, Cobham the heretic. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was an 
earnest disciple of Wyclif. His activity in supporting and disseminating Lollard doctrines 
brought down on him the wrath of the Church, and after the passing of Henry V’s statutes 
against heresy not all Oldcastle’s distinguished military record nor his personal friendship 
with Henry could save him. He was cited before the Bishops, examined, and adjudged a 
heretic. He was committed to the Tower, but escaped, and was at large for four years, 
when he was captured, brought to London, and hanged and burned in 1417. The orthodox 
Hoccleve has a poem of pious denunciations against Cobham, printed EETS ed. i:8; and the 
Liber Metricus of Elmham, printed in the Memorials of Henry V, Rolls Series 1858, is 
equally fierce. Later Oldcastle became a sort of half-mythical figure; from Shakespeare’s 
(first) Henry Fourth i, scene 2:48 it may be inferred that there was an early play in which 
he figured. His “Examination” may be read in Arber’s Engl.Garner, vol. vi. See Tenny- 
son’s poem on Oldcastle. 

9. lollers, Lollards. See Skeat’s note on CantTales B 1173.—incipient. The Grafton- 
Ellis text reads insapient, “foolish”. 

11. it haue, “it to have”. 

12. suppowelment, aid, support. The word suppowaile, sowponaile, is frequent in this 
sense in Lydgate. See, e.g.,Thebes 267, “As his Pyler & his sowpowayle’’, or FaPrinces iv :39, 
“And registreer to suppowaile trouthe”. See Dance 663. 

13. toke them vp. The sense of “capture, arrest” for this phrase is more modern. It 
may mean “overtook”, ie., after pursuit. Grafton-Ellis has a different line. 

24. What ground Hardyng had for the statement that Oldcastle was recaptured within 
an hour of his escape from the Tower is not clear. There was some mystery about the 
means of his escape. Redman,—see the Memorials of Henry V above cited—says that he was 
either helped by his friends or bribed his guards, and fled into Wales, where “ad breve et 
perexiguum tempus permansit”. This remark as to the length of Oldcastle’s stay in Wales 
Hardyng may have misinterpreted to refer to the period of his freedom, which was, how- 
‘ever, as said, four years. 

26. by all the Clergy sight, i.e. in all the clergy’s sight, or opinion? 

34. Rychard Scrope. Richard le Scrope, Archbishop of York, was executed for treason in 
1405 by Henry the Fourth. He was buried in York Minster, and the men of his county 
elevated their fallen leader to the rank of martyr. Miracles were said to be wrought at his 
tomb, and although the Church never canonized him, he was known in the North of England 
as St. Richard Scrope. His nephew Henry le Scrope was implicated in the Earl of Cam- 
bridge’s conspiracy against Henry V, and was summarily executed in 1415, on the eve of 
Henry’s departure for France. 

36. Kynge Rycharde, etc. Richard II of England, deposed by Henry of Lancaster, 
afterward Henry the Fourth, was probably murdered while a prisoner in Pontefract Castle, 
Yorkshire, a few months after his deposition. The popular pity and interest for him were 
so great that Henry IV surrounded his death and burial with secrecy, and interred him in a 


PAGE 235] HARDYNG 475 


church at Kings Langley, near Windsor, instead of in the tomb Richard had built for him- 
self and his first wife Anne of Bohemia in Westminster Abbey. But Henry V removed 
Richard’s body to its proper place in the Abbey tomb. 

45. laycestr, Leicester, where the Parliament of 1414 was held. 

46. Thomas duke of Clarence, third son of Henry the Fourth, fell in the French war 
in 1421, a year before the king’s death. 

47. John duke of Bedford, Henry V’s next brother, was the most able and highminded 
of the brothers; he carried on the French war after Henry’s death. 

50. Vmfray. Humphrey duke of Gloucester, Henry the Fourth’s youngest son. See 
the notes on him as listed in the Glossary. 

52. Bewford. This is Thomas Beaufort, one of the children of John of Gaunt, duke 
of Lancaster, by his mistress Katherine Swynford, whom Gaunt ultimately married as his 
third wife. Her children, all born previously, were legitimised by Richard II, but barred 
from succession to the crown. This uncle of Henry V was made duke of Exeter by the 
king; another uncle, the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester, was a man of great wealth, who 
after Henry’s death struggled with Humphrey of Gloucester for control of the infant king 
and the national affairs. 

55-56. Henry Percy, “Hotspur”, eldest son of the earl of Northumberland, fell at 
Shrewsbury fighting against Henry IV, and according to Shakespeare died by the hand of 
“Prince Hal” himself. As the father also had conspired against the House of Lancaster, the 
Percy name was attainted and the estates reverted to the crown; but in 1414 Henry V restored 
the family honors to Hotspur’s son, another Henry Percy. It is this restoration which 
Hardyng mentions. 

Whenever an English noble holding fief direct from the Crown succeeded to title and 
estates, it was necessary for him to ‘‘sue out” or present his claim, do formal homage, and 
teceive his inheritance from his feudal lord. It was the traversing of such established right 
by Richard II, who seized the Lancastrian estates on John of Gaunt’s death, which brought 
Henry of Lancaster (afterwards Henry IV) back from temporary banishment to insist 
upon his claim; and the dispute led directly to Richard’s fall, 

57. Mawdelayne day, St. Mary Magdalen’s day, July 22. 

58-63. This muddled statement seems to be that Sir Robert Umfraville (Hardyng’s 
patron), entrusted with an expedition against the Scots, took full control of it, and directed 
the nominal guide whither he should lead the party,—from which expedition he, Umfraville, 
derived great credit. In line 61 toke hym to has the force of “betook him to”, i.e., addressed 
himself to. 

64. thaym, i.e., the Scots. “Greterigge” is rendered “‘Geteryng” in the Grafton-Ellis text. 

70. toke thaym vp, overtook them. See note on line 13 above.—fleand, see line 6. 

71. lammesse. “Lammas” is celebrated on August 1. The word is derived from O. E. 
Alaf, a loaf, and maesse, mass, and denotes the harvest festival, at which bread was made 
from the first ripe corn. 

72. hampton. Southampton, whence the French expedition sailed under Henry V to 
the conquest of Normandy. Here was settled the fate of the Earl of Cambridge, Henry 
Lord Scrope, etc., whose conspiracy against the king was discovered on the eve of departure. 
See note on line 34 above. 

78. harflete, Harfleur in Normandy. Henry laid siege to this town the middle of 
August 1415, and it surrendered on Sept 22. See the first poem on Agincourt mentioned at 
close of introd. ante. 

85. Orlience. The duke of Orléans whose capture at Agincourt is here mentioned is 
the poet-prince Charles of Orléans, translations of whose verse are included in the present 
volume. 

86. Burboyne. This is Jean de Bourbon, born 1381, who remained in captivity in Eng- 
land for 18 years, and died there in 1434, after paying a ransom of 300,000 crowns three 
times over to no avail. It is asserted by French writers that Henry V on his deathbed 
charged his brother to keep Bourbon and Orléans prisoners at all costs until the establish- 
‘ment of Henry VI upon the throne of France. 


476 NOTES [PAGE 235 


87. wendome, Louis de Bourbon, count of Vendome. 

88. sir Arthur of Bretayne. Arthur duke de Richemont, afterward duke of Brittany, 
prisoner in England until 1420,—Line 89 is missing from this MS, but has been recognized 
in the numbering. The Grafton-Ellis text is at this point quite different; it condenses the 
material of stanzas 13 and 14 into one strophe, and does not use the second half of stanza 14 
as here. A mention of Boucicault marshal of France as an eminent prisoner is perhaps 
the content of the line here missing. 

92-93. The French dukes of Bar, Alengon, and Lorraine, slain at Agincourt, are now 
named. 

97. layde ... to wedde, pledged. O. E. wedde, a pledge or forfeit. 

99. Edward second duke of York, who commanded the van at Agincourt, was the 
eldest son of Edmund the first duke, son of Edward III. 

104-5. Hardyng’s figures here and in line 97 are not in accord with scholarly investiga- 
tion and estimate. The English army may have numbered 15,000 men; the French was, 
according to Ramsay’s Lancaster and York, “certainly three times as numerous”, perhaps of 
50,000 men. Monstrelet, the French chronicler, gives the French loss at 10,000, and English 
writers state theirs to have been from 14 men to 1,600 men. 

106. Crispin and Crispimian day, October 25. 

111. smored, smothered. Rendered “smouldered to death” in Leland’s Itinerary i:4-5. 

118. Thurgh Pykardy etc. From inland Normandy a force marching to English-held 
Calais would cross Picardy, and pass Guines. 

121. Sygismounde. The emperor Sigismund, also king of Hungary and of Bohemia and 
brother to Anne of Bohemia wife of Richard II, is degraded in modern estimation by his 
betrayal of the reformer John Huss, who came to the Council of Constance (1414) trusting 
in the imperial safe-conduct. Sigismund later visited France and England; he was in 
France in March 1416, and arrived in England May first. His visit, which lasted until 
latter August, was elaborately celebrated, and left many echoes in fifteenth-century writings; 
see for instance the Libel of English Policy, printed here, lines 8 ff. Henry V made Sigis- 
mund a knight of the Garter, as Hardyng says; on that occasion the emperor presented the 
head of St. George to the Order, and Ramsay, in his Lancaster and York i:234 note, cites 
to show that the relic was preserved until Henry VIII's time. 

123. the Garter. The Order of the Garter was established by Edward III in 1349, five 
years after Philip of Burgundy’s establishment of the Order of the Golden Fleece. It was 
founded on St. George’s day, April 23, and its patrons were the Holy Trinity, the Virgin, 
St. Edward the Confessor, and St. George. As the last-named was patron saint of England, 
he was often considered especial patron of the Order, which was thus sometimes called the 
“Order of St. George”. As originally constituted, it was made up of twenty-five Knights 
Companions and the Sovereign; each had a stall in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, where 
the annual assembly was held. The Order was reorganized and enlarged in 1831. 


LONDON LICKPENNY 


1, 2. In the latter “amended” version of Harley 367, these lines read:—“To london once 
my stepps I bent Where trouth in no wyse should be feynt’. 

12, 25, 33. Upon these three Courts of Law see Stow’s Survey of London, ed. Kingsford, 
1i:118. They were all in Westminster Hall. “At the entry on the right hand the common 
place [i. e. Common Pleas], where ciuill matters are to be pleaded, especially such as touch 
lands or contracts; at the vpper end of the Hall, on the right hand or Southest corner, the 
king’s bench, where pleas of the Crowne haue their hearing; and on the left hand or South- 
west corner sitteth the Lord Chancellor, accompanied with the master of the Rowles and other 
men... called maisters of the Chauncerie.” This last-named court handled all cases relating 
to revenue, and the King’s Bench and Common Pleas, as Stow says, took cognizance respec- 
tively of trespasses against the King’s peace and of disputes between private persons. 


PAGE 238] LONDON LICKPENNY 477 


20. The clerk apparently calls the names of the parties concerned in the next action. 
See lines 155-59 of the Satire on the Consistory Courts, printed by Boéddeker in his Altengl. 
Dichtung, p. 107; see the 14th Coventry Play. 

26. The silken hood was worn by sergeants; only a sergeant could plead in the Court of 
Common Pleas. See note on 31. 

31. momme of his mouthe. Here cp. Piers Plowman (B) prol. 210-15:—“3it houed 
there an hondreth in houues of selke Seriauntz it semed that serueden atte barre Plededen 
for penyes and poundes the lawe. And nou3t for loue of owre lorde vnlese here lippes onis. 
Thow my3test better mete the myste on Maluerne hulles Than gete a momme of here mouthe 
but money were shewed”. 

35. qui tollis, This line and its companion are rewritten in the later version of the 
poem. The Latin phrase, evidently a legal formula, may be the summons to complainants to 
stand forth, i.e. “Thou who hast a grievance, present it”. 

42. gowne of ray. Ray, a striped cloth, was much worn by lawyers; see Assembly of 
Gods 550 for Minos in his “roob of ray”. 

51. flemings grete woon, a great crowd of Flemings. Both felt hats and spectacles, 
offered for sale by the Flemish traders so numerous in London at this time, are appropriate 
merchandise for a country which specialized in cloth-making and was the first in Europe to 
develop the art of lens-grinding. 

54. spectacles. Spectacles had not long been in use in England. Hoccleve in his poem to 
Oldcastle, line 417, describes them, and in his poem to the Duke of York he says that his 
own vanity prevents his use of them. Bokenam, in his St. Margaret, lines 657-8, says that 
his eyes “bleynte shuld be, ner helpe of a spectacle”. And Lydgate, FaPrinces ix :3335, de- 
scribes his “eyen mystyd and dirked my spectacle’. Flemish fifteenth century tapestries and 
paintings show spectacles in use, e. g. by St. Peter in a large tapestry hanging in the Museum 
of Fine Arts, Boston. 

58. at high prime. Nine o’clock in the morning; see Skeat’s note on Piers Plowman 
(C) ix:119. Laborers and artisans then took the first hearty meal of the working day, 
which began very early. See Chaucer’s Troilus ii1:1557. 

59. Cokes, etc. The vendor-calls of cooks and taverners are mentioned in Piers Plow- 
man prol. 225-9. See Hoccleve’s Male Régle 57 for cooks at Westminster Gate, and 89 
below for others near Billingsgate, on the river. 

65. In to London. In the fifteenth century Westminster and the City of London were 
separated by the “Liberties”, a district partly open and partly occupied by the walled resi- 
dences of nobles, the buildings of the Temple, etc. Our countryman crossed Long Ditch 
after leaving Westminster Hall by the Gate, walked by White Hall along the Strand, entered 
the City through Ludgate, and passed along Fleet Street to St. Paul’s and the west end of 
Cheapside. 

67 ff. This poem contains some of the earliest records of London street cries. Later 
they attracted the attention of musicians, and in the seventeenth century combinations of 
them, known as “fancies”, were arranged. On them see Bridge, Old Cryes of London, 1921; 
ibid., pp. 36-39, is such a compilation, repr. from the Roxburghe Ballads vii:57.—in the ryse, 
on the twig or branch. 

76. umple. Fine gauze or lawn; see the Assembly of Ladies 471, in Skeat’s Chaucer, 
vol. vii. This word is removed in the Harley 367 remodeling of our poem. 

77. could no skyle, had no knowledge. 

81. London Stone. Stow in his Survey, i:224-5, gives various theories as to the purpose 
served by this stone. The antiquary Camden first suggested, says Kingsford, that it was 
a Roman “milliarium”, or central stone from which distances were measured along the great 
roads to the north and west. In Stow’s day the stone was very large, was near the middle 
of Candlewick (now Cannon) Street, and was supported by iron bands. What remained of 
it was in 1798 built into the wall of St. Swithin’s Church near by. 

The streets traversed by the author are West Cheap (Cheapside today) and its eastward 
continuation Cornhill; Candlewick or Canwick Street and its continuation Eastcheap run 


478 NOTES [PAGE 239 


east and west nearer the river. He seems to have wandered back to Cornhill after being 
in Eastcheap, and then to have turned south down to the Thames at Billingsgate, just beyond 
London Bridge. Lacking his two pence for the ferry, he may have crossed the bridge into 
Southwark, and so got back to Kent and his plow. 

93. ye by cokke, etc. “Yea, by God”. See the Manciple’s prologue, the Parson’s prol. 
29, in the CantTales; see the Plowman’s Tale 1271 in Skeat vii. 

94. Jenken and Julyan. Evidently a song or songs by itinerant beggars. St. Julian 
was the patron saint of hospitality, but the poem does not read St. Julian. 

100. in westminstar. These words are perhaps an explanatory gloss which has been 
worked into the text. 

105. the Taverner. A wine-dealer. The MS writes my instead of me. 

114. wagge ... gow hens. The word wagge may be either verb or substantive. The 
verb means “begone” in Elizabethan writers; the subst. means “fellow”. For gow, “go we”, 
“let us go”, cp. Troilus i1:615, 1163, v:402; see the first Digby Mystery, line 276. 

118. “Do you think I will choose you as a subject for almsgiving?” The MS has made 
a correction of my to no, in which case we must put our question after thow, and treat the 
rest of the line as an assertion. 


* THE LIBEL OF ENGLISH POLICY 


The MS here used, Brit. Mus. Harley 4011, is a paper volume containing various entries 
in both verse and prose, written partly by W. Grauell, who has executed the copy of our poem, 
and partly by W. Woodeward. It contains three short poems by Lydgate, the second and 
third being extracts from the Fall of Princes; Lydgate’s Life of our Lady, etc.; a copy 
of the Mappula Anglie attributed to Bokenam, see EnglStud 10:1-40; etc. 

2. Off outward. i. e., from outside. 

4. The Cotton MS reads: “Ner say of sooth but it is one of the best”. Laud is very 
similar ; this MS is inferior in sense. 

5. Who sailethe. A better reading is “as who seith”, in the Laud MS. See line 115. 

7. narow See, the English Channel. 

8. Beside stanza 2 is the marginal rubric:—‘‘Videns Imperator Sigismonde duas villas 
inter ceteras Anglis .d. Calisiam (et) Doveriam ponens suos duos digitos super suos duos 
oculos ait regi ffrater custodite istas suas villas sicut vestros oculos &c”’. For Sigismund’s 
visit to England in 1416 see note on line 121 of Hardyng’s Chronicle here. 

9. Whiche reigned. The Laud MS reads “Whyche yet regneth”; Harley 271 and Har- 
ley 78 (fol. 35) read “Wiche late reyned”; the Cotton MS, “Of high Renowne”. The dif- 
ference in tense marks the earlier and the later recension, Laud’s composition dating before 
the death of Sigismund in December 1437. 

20. sir. Other MSS sure—a better reading. 

25. The Laud MS reads: “‘What marchaundy may forby be agoo”. Our text gives the 
sense of “When commerce cannot go past, who can escape (business) misfortune? 

34-35. In the margin the scribe has written:—‘Quatuor considerantur in moneta aurea 
anglicana quod dicitur nobile S. Rex Navis Gladius et potestatem super mare. In quorum 
obprobrium hijs diebus britones minores & fflandrenses &c. dicunt Anglicis tollite de nobile 
vestro Navem & imponite ovem. Intendentes quare sicut quondam A tempore Edwardi 
tercij Anglici erant domini maris modo hijs diebus sunt vecordes victi & ad bellandi & 
mari conservandi velud oves & sicut sepissime patet eorum derisio &c.’”—oure noble. The gold 
coin called the noble bore a crowned male figure holding a sword and seated in a ship on the 
waves. See line 17 and note, of LettGlouc., here. 

37. set a shepe. The increase of England’s sheepfarming in this period was associated 
by her enemies with her decline in naval power. See Capgrave’s De IIlustribus Henricis, 
line 135:—“Cachinnant de nobis inimici et dicunt ‘Tollite navem de pretiosa moneta et im- 
primite ovem’.” 

38. our rule halteth, our sovereignty is lame, loses strength. 


PAGE 245] ANSUS, IAUSIOIL, 479 


39. “Who is bold enough to bid our government be on the alert”? 

44. Warner notes that nobles similar to those of England were struck in Flanders, and 
were forbidden currency in England because of their lighter weight. 

45. as. MS Laud reads and. 

57. The “points” of a medieval gentleman’s dress were a set of leather thongs upon the 
lower part of the doublet and the upper part of the hose or breeches; these had to be tied 
or “trussed” to support the hose. Point-making was a separate occupation, and required deli- 
cate leather. 

60. staple fayre. See introd. to this text for note on the fairs of the Low Countries. 

61. To haue. A better reading is They have, as in MS Laud.—Scluse, Sluys, the port of 
Bruges. 

62. the Swyn, the small arm of the North Sea, called the Zwyn, where the modern canal 
of Bruges terminates. When this silted up, in the late fifteenth century, the commercial pros- 
perity of Bruges waned. 

74. cloth of Ipre. The clothmaking of Ypres and of Ghent is mentioned ProlCT 447. 

75. Curryk. Laud 704 reads Curtryke, i. e., Cortoriacum, the Courtrai of modern Bel- 
gium, busy then as now in the weaving of linen and cotton. 

79. Other MSS read “Ye wote ye make (it) of—’etc. , 

80-82 is a question. “Do you not get it through your head (that)” etc. 

85. the growndes twayn, the two lands of Spain and Flanders. 

91. comons fflemynges, the Flemish common people. 

95. with outen lease, verily. A tag for rime. 

112. the Rochell, La Rochelle, on the French coast north of the mouth of the Garonne; 
a centre of the wine-trade. 

113. Bretons baye. Warner cites Nicolas as identifying this bay with that of Bourg- 
neuf, south of the Loire. It was granted by Edward III to Walter de Bentley in 1349, and 
was a centre for the salt trade. 

120. leef or lothe, i. e., willy-nilly. A padding phrase frequent for rime. 

122. in substaunce, a padding phrase; “for the most part”. 

132. osay. In Piers Plowman prol. 228-9 are mentioned “white wyn of Osey and red wyn 
of Gascoigne Of the Ryne and of the Rochel”. Hakluyt in his Voyages 1:188 assigns Osey 
to Portugal; Skeat considers the word as a corruption of Alsace, which fits the Rhine district 
named in Piers Plowman. But see Warner’s note. 

142. The passage is confused in our MS and in Laud; the sense is clearer in Harley 
271 with which Harley 78 fol. 38 closely agrees :— 


Vn to oure sayd enmyes by se to resorte 

In tyme of warre & them to soporte 

Seth our frendis owe not for to be the cavse 

Of our hyndryng ban reson schewith pis cawse... 


The author is really discussing the impossibility of neutrality. 

144. Our MS omits the negative present in other MSS. 

161. “This fact our merchants have realized all too dearly.” 

163. thise seid pillours. Laud reads “these fals coloured piloures”. 

164. Seint malouse. The town of St. Malo was until the 19th century a centre of cor- 
sair activity. 

172. Our MS reads recunsomed. Laud reads “towne by towne”. 

173. This probably corrupt line gave the scribes trouble. Texts vary between regnes 
and regions, best and bost. The sense apparently is that the story of these misdeeds has gone 
far and wide. Cp. the Inferno 27:78, “ch’al fine della terra il suono uscie’, from Romans 
x :18. 

176. Easy reputacion, ill repute. 

179. a good Squyer. Warner identifies this man, mentioned as “Hampton squyere” in 
the later version of the Libel, with John Hampton, squire of the body to the king, Master of 
the Ordnance, etc. 


480 NOTES [PAGE 247 


181. The Laud MS has only one with. The sense is—“that I have discussed with men 
of rank and with commoners”, 

184. third. Read thrid for rime. 

188. Laud and the Hakluyt print read:—“He feld the wayes to rule well the see.’ For 
this use of felt see Pallad. prol. 73 and note. 

190. Harflete and Houndflele, i. e. Harfleur and Honfleur, important trading towns at the 
mouth of the Seine, taken and retaken during the Hundred Years’ War. 

194. Laud reads “Upon the whyche” etc.; that is, this peace having been made by agree- 
ment, the merchants ventured out. 

200. money. Laud reads navy. 

202. the Duke, i. e., of Brittany, as in 192. 

203-4. “How such injury was estopped by convention, and the peace just made was nulli- 
fied by this conduct.” 

206, 208. Mont St. Michel and St. Malo, strongholds of Breton piracy, which their Duke 
at first declares are beyond his control. 

211. Laud reads “But whan the kyng anone had takene hede.” 

216. Laud has wj after townes, 

217 ff. King Edward issues to the energetic seaport towns of Dartmouth, Plymouth, 
and Fowey, authority to avenge England on the Breton robbers.—fortefye, i.e., to strengthen, 
assist. 

221. see men, seamen, 

222. thet myght not route, could not assemble, unite to resist. 

225. for the truse. Laud reads “as he fyrst dyd dewysse”. 

235. as seid was is parenthetical. 

236. The bracketed word is from other MSS. After this line other texts have a couplet 
not in Harley 4011. 

238-41. He is King Edward, who by an act of 1343 ordered that Lombards and other alien 
merchants should be taxed if they outstayed their forty days on English soil. 

249. In the margin is:—“Hic patet de incendio villarum de Poperyng & de Belle per 
ducem Gloucestrie & suos.’ The Flemish towns of Poperinghes and of Bailleul were 
sacked by Gloucester’s forces in a punitive expedition, 1436, after Philip of Burgundy’s at- 
tempted seizure of Calais. See the Ballad against the Flemings, Ref. List v1, p. 145. 

253. for any thyng, at all costs. See Prol CT 276. 

257, 265, 266, 334. The bracketed words are in other MSS. 

258. JI do it vpon yow, I call upon you, put it up to you. 

202. This line gave the scribes trouble. Laud has knowen after charged; Cotton reads 
charged knowen that ye; Harley 78 has charged ayen wt outtyn ly, and Harley 271 is 
similar. The phrase at eye usually means “clearly, obviously”; it is here so used lines 30, 
386, 480, and in the Palladius prol. 32, 33. One might surmise that charged at eye meant 
“loaded to the hawseholes”, which were called eyes; but this is surmise. 

263-4. A distinction is made between mercery and “haberdasshe ware”. The former 
was textile fabrics; although the earliest English use of the word haberdassher is connected 
with cap-making, the 16th cent. users of the term defined it to mean French or Milan caps, 
daggers, swords, glasses, etc., or birdcages, lanterns, etc. Our writer seems to distinguish 
between fabrics and hardware. 

325. Siluer. MSS Laud and Harley 271 read sylke. 

326. waad is probably woad, a plant yielding a blue dye. 

327. Wolle oyle, wood-oil, used in the draping of cloth. 

329. Laud and Cotton fill out the line at close with J wene, Harley 78 and 271 with 
bedene. 

338. The Company of Grocers, incorporated in London about 1344, was composed of 
wholesale dealers in spices and foreign foodstuffs. Spices were extensively used on the 
medieval table and in cooking because the lack of refrigeration made it necessary to dis- 
guise the taste of meats and fish past the prime. They were of course high-priced, and 
“things of complacience”, i.e., luxuries. 


PAGE 248] THE LIBEL 481 


340. Apes / Japes / and Marmesettes. This line is cited NED for jape, which is 
explained as “trifle, toy, trinket”. In Skelton’s Magnificence 1132-34 these three words are 
also linked. Marmosets, or small monkeys, were favored pets in the houses of the rich, 
as contemporary paintings show us. 

341. nifles, things of naught. See Chaucer’s SummTale 52, Skelton’s Magnif. 1143. 
With this passage cp. Browne, Britannia’s Pastorals ii, song 4 near close. 

342. blere with our eye, “with which they blear our eye”, ie., deceive us. For the 
idiom see Reve’s Tale 129; for the use of with see note Thebes 35 here. 

344. Other MSS have wastable instead of unstable. 

351. cure seems to mean pharmacopoeia. 

352. In the margin is: “Of dragges materiall for resceites of medecyne.’—scamonye, a 
gum from the roots of Convolvulus Scammonia, native in Syria and in Asia Minor, was a 
strong purgative. 

353. Turbit. Turbith, or turpeth, was a cathartic drug prepared from the root of 
East Indian jalap—euforbe, euphorbia or milkweed, growing in warm climates, secretes 
a milky juice used to purge phlegm.—correcte is noted by NED only as “some medicinal 
herb”. —dagardye or diagrydium was a preparation of scammony, see 352. 

354. Rubarbe Sene, rhubarb and senna.—towo may be two; Laud has to, the Harleys 
full. 

356. fayned is an error; read forsayd, with the two Harley MSS; Laud has said. 

361. senynge is probably written for seyinge, as in Laud. 

364. Read prese, as in MS Laud, instead of plese. 

366-67. likyng ware and etyng ware, luxuries and food-stuffs, already named, for which 
England exchanges her necessities. 

369 means “which can ill be spared”. 

382-3. That is, these travelling alien merchants spy out our economic conditions and 
plans, and write them in report; then by disguised schemes are pushed their countertails, i.e. 
opposed plans.—The countertally and tally were originally the two halves of the scored 
account-rod, split and given respectively to seller and purchaser, in the days before written 
accounts were general. Here the word is metaphorical. 

388. This illustration is of great value to economic historians, although the badness 
of the MSS and the confusion of the pronouns make it difficult to follow. The first com- 
plaint is the usual one, of the drain of gold from England; see Cunningham pp. 395 etc. 
Then it would seem that the Cotswold men sold their wool on credit to Italian merchants, 
who retailed it in Italy at higher prices, took their Italian gold to Flanders and loaned it, 
making a further profit there while their English creditors waited. 

405. make not straunge, do not shrink from. 

407. lettir seems to be the Venetians’ bill of exchange, which when cashed in England 
meant a loss of fourpence in the noble, twelvepence in the pound. 

410 says apparently that if Englishmen desired payment a month ahead of maturity 
they must accept a discount of two shillings in the pound, three shillings if two months 
ahead. The writer reckons eightpence per noble, and three nobles equal a pound. On the 
English gold retailed in Flanders another usurious profit follows; see note Dance Macabre 
393 on usury. 

426 ff. is another case of “deceit”. The foreign dealer sold at Bruges for cash the 
wool he had purchased in England on time-note of one or two years; then taking a five 
per cent. loss on the cash transaction, he lent the money out at interest until maturity, 
making profit enough to purchase more wool at the Staple. 

438. Read with a comma after agayne; day is the subject of come. 

443. Harley 78 and 271 read iij instead of iiij, and Laud reads her. 

444. The free travel of the foreign merchant about England is indignantly contrasted 
by the author with the restrictions imposed upon English merchants abroad. 

449 ff. A time-limit of forty days for the discharge and re-loading of alien ershanes 
ships is demanded. 


482 NOTES [PAGE 250 


452, 474. go to hoste. In continuance of an earlier policy, it had been ordained by a 
statute of 5th Henry IV that in every town and port to which aliens resorted there should 
be a sufficient “host” or guardian assigned to them by the mayor or bailiff, and that such 
aliens should dwell only under his control. This however was not strictly enforced, and 
the Rolls of Parliament all through the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI are dotted with 
petitions from English traders praying for more restraints on visiting foreign merchants. 
A marginal note against this passage is: “Here is to be noted pat sithen this seid ordenaunce 
of writyng thei haue be ordeyned to go to host in london.—But how bis pollecy is subuerted 
it is mervayle to know pe wyles and giles.” 

461. The 12 lines of Harley 4011 now omitted are paralleled by 22 in other texts. 

478. A complaint of “graft”. 

479. publius is an error for public; thing publius is res publica. 

481. “Bribes and entertainments are used to thwart the normal growth of our commerce.” 

481, 506, 510, 525. Observe the various plural endings. 

490. Only 14 days are allowed us in Brabant for unloading and loading, says our 
writer. 

493, 499. Bracketed words are from other texts. 

502. faires. See introduction to this text. 

516. And is written for an, “if”. 

517. The means of land transportation would not suffice to handle the sea traffic, were 
that checked. 

522. dyne. Read dyen, as in the Cotton MS. A comma, in sense, follows wt. 

531. Burgayn, etc. Burgundy, Cambrai, Cologne. 

537. The bracketed word is from other texts. 

538. multiplye. Read multifarye, as in Laud. 

542. whan this caried. Other MSS that this cartyd. 

548. men. Other MSS neuer. See line 4 above. The of is superfluous. 

552. MSS Laud and Harley 271 read “and we shuld hem distroye”. 

553. Other MSS have before nove either bring to or take and. 

554. A marginal note reads: “Note of defautes lettyng of our good spede in policie.” 

557-8. The Laud MS reads: “but we be frail as glasse’; Harley 78, “but we by for a 
glasse”; Cotton has “but we be freely I gesse’. Our MS omits be, and should read fraile 
for fre. Brasil is miswritten for brotyll as in other MSS. Punctuate with a full pause 
after fflandres. 

[No more of the Libel is here printed.] 

As mentioned in the introduction to this text, the epilogue differs in the two recen- 
sions of the poem. The first copy of Harley 78 has no epilogue, and a condensed conclusion. 
The epilogue of Harley 78 (second copy) runs with that of Laud and Pepys. Harley 271, 
Gurney, Brit.Mus.Adds. 40673, Bodl.Rawlinson poetry 32, and (probably) the mutilated 
Cotton Vitellius E x, alter one stanza of the epilogue to address three unnamed lords instead 
of Baron Hungerford as in the earlier recension. Phillipps 8299 (now Huntington 140) I 
have not seen, nor the Cowper MS. All Souls College, Oxford, ciii, is impf. at close, as 
is Harley 4011. I print below the text of Harley 271. 


Go forthe lytle bylle & mekly schew pis face 
Apperyng euer wt humbell eontenance 

& pray my lordes to take In grace 

In apposell & cherisch be & a Avaunce 

To hardyness yf bt no variaunce 

pou hast sore thowt trowthe be full experience 
Auutors & resons if ow3t falle in substaunce 
Remytt to hym pt geff be pis science 


To the gret prelate pe heyghest so confessor 
The gret mayster of be gretest housse 
Cheff tresorere of the gret socoure 


PAGE 252] THE COMPEND OF ALCHEMY 483 


Besschop Cherle and baroun plentivous 
Of high wyttes lordes thre famous 
To examene thy doubled rendytee 

I offer be tham to be gracious 

To myn excuse farwell my own trete 


(In line 12 cherle should be erle.) 
Warner suggests as the first of these three nobles either John Stafford, bishop of Bath 


and Wells, or Henry Cardinal Beaufort, bishop of Winchester; as the second, William de Ia 
Pole earl of Suffolk, steward of the king’s household; as the third, Ralph Cromwell. See 
Warner’s notes. 


RIPLEY’S COMPEND OF ALCHEMY 
A Note on Alchemy 


Alchemy in its widest sense has a philosophical basis. It pretends, and has pretended, to 
no miracle, but asserts its entire dependence upon the laws of nature. It maintained, as Plato 
maintained in the Timaeus, that all matter is in essence one; behind all visible phenomena 
there is an Essential, and from this one “prima materia’ or “remote matter’, differentiated 
into four elements of earth, air, water, and fire, God created the whole world of things. 
The substances known to us are complexes, full of admixtures and impurities, but never- 
theless each containing some portion of that “remote matter”, which well-directed effort 
can disengage and refine. This separation of the ‘‘prima materia’, or “elixir”, or “philoso- 
pher’s stone”, or “powder of projection”, from the gross burden of ordinary matter was 
the central problem of the alchemists. An important point, of course, was to begin this 
process of separation as near as possible to purity; and alchemists very early agreed in 
identifying the “prima materia” with mercury,—not crude mercury, but that sublimed “mer- 
cury of the philosophers” which was most immediately resident in mercury, and could be ob- 
tained from it by removing the fluidity, the volatility, and other disturbing attributes of 
ordinary mercury. 

The ancient or medieval student of chemistry (alchemy) guided his procedure as much 
by theory as by practice; philosophy and analogy were as important to him as experiment 
or observation. Stephanus of Alexandria, a seventh century writer, said, for example, 
that a metal was, like man, composed of a body and a soul. The soul of anything in 
nature was its most subtle essence, its natural tinctorial spirit. And if matter was to 
become perfect, it must be stripped of its physical qualities, its grosser body, so that its 
soul might be set free. The second cardinal dogma of alchemy, that substances were within 
limits capable of transformation into one another, was also based on analogy and theory. 
Since an oxide-bearing rock could be forced by heat into the semblance of iron, and this 
iron by more heat or by exposure to the air could pass back into the state of oxide; since 
all matter decayed, changed, and was born again, it followed that the whole creation was 
in a ceaseless flux, that the “prima materia” or soul of things was continually receiving and 
discarding qualities. And the adept by study could reproduce and develop those processes. 
None but a charlatan would pretend that anything non-metallic, as eggshells or ashes, could 
be transmuted into the highest of metals, gold; but the baser metals, such as iron or lead, 
could, on alchemical theory, be deprived of their own superficial qualities, could be reduced 
to their ultimate metallic base, and then, by addition of the qualities peculiar to gold, could 
be transmuted into the nobler metal. A chief agent in this transmutation was the “prima 
materia” or “remote matter”. The management of the stages by which “remote matter” 
was first found, then intermingled with an inferior substance so as to give the common 
metal-base, and then refined so as to become gold, was the most desired and most difficult 
art of the alchemist. In Jonson’s Alchemist, act ii, scene 3, we find the arch-swindler 
Subtle saying that “remote matter” is a “humid exhalation” called “materia liquida or the 
unctuous water”, and that when intermingled with a certain “crasse and viscous portion 
of earth”, the result would be the elementary matter of gold. The theory underlying all 


484 NOTES 


this process was at first solely “chemical”, but was applied with increasing frequency to 
medicine, especially by Paracelsus in the sixteenth century. 

The science of alchemy reaches back much further than the sixteenth century. Many 
of its practitioners claimed the god Hermes as father of the art; treatises in Greek exist, 
and Arabic sources are claimed for many Latin treatises of the Middle Ages. The Arabian 
Jaber or Geber, of the eighth-ninth century, and the Spanish mystic Raimon Lull or Lully, 
who died in 1315, had probably little or no share in the alchemical treatises which passed 
as theirs; but Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Arnoldus Villanovanus,—Chaucer‘s 
“Arnold of the Newe Toun” in the CanYeoTale,—were great thirteenth-century names. 
Among the crowd of teachers there were differences of detail, but some general tenets 
were common to all. There were four spirits, or substances by means of which bodies 
could be changed,—mercury, sulphur, arsenic, and sal ammoniac. There were three “men- 
strues” or liquors, which were respectively animal, vegetable, and mineral, and were presided 
over by Sol, Luna, and Mercury. Every metal had in the cycle of existence previously 
been “water mineral’, and had in itself the potentiality of a liquid state. In seeking a 
solution, any substance must be “loosed in its own menstrue”, (Jonson’s Alchemist ii,3:281) 
that is, a vegetable menstrue must not be employed to dissolve animal or mineral. The 
metals were seven: mercury (which was thus both body and spirit), gold, silver, iron, tin, 
copper, and lead. In alchemical jargon, the names of the planets wére applied to the metals; 
gold and silver were Sol and Luna, iron Mars, tin Jupiter, copper Venus, lead Saturn. 
Gold was to be formed from purified mercury and a small portion of pure sulphur. To 
arrive at this union, the spirits and bodies must be subjected to a long and complicated series 
of processes, chief among which was the action of heat. According to Geber, these pro- 
cesses were sublimation, or the rendering a body vaporous; then volatilisation or condensation ; 
distillation; calcination; coagulation or crystallisation; incineration, etc. 

Great stress was laid upon the purity of the substance used, and upon right composition. 
God had made all things in “number, ponder, and measure’; and an alchemical procedure 
must heed these subtle laws. When the four elements are wisely joined in a body, the 
color will rise toward perfection; inward natural heat will begin to work, excited by out- 
ward artificial heat; and the process of change is comparable, said the analogy-hunting al- 
chemists, to human digestion. The index to a right progress of this digestion is the color 
of the composition at various stages Color was highly important in alchemy. It was 
believed, e.g., that any metal was potentially all metals, and that the predominance of the 
quality which individualized each was expressed in its color. To change silver to gold 
was to remove whiteness and substitute yellowness, or, as the alchemist would say, to dealbi- 
ficate and then citrinate. The function of the “philosopher’s stone” was colorative or 
“tinctorial”. The comparison with the art of the dyer was constantly in the minds of the 
alchemists, and one reason for the superiority of gold to other metals was its refusal to 
be decolorized, its resistance to fire. To obtain a superficial coloration was mere dyeing; 
real coloration implied a transformation of the metal. 

In maintaining the proper heat for the proper length of time, in carrying each operation 
to its right pitch, lay unlimited possibilities of error and of excuses for fraud. There 
were no means of test such as we use today in experiment; and when failure arrived, as it 
regularly did, the alchemist and his assistant accused one another (see Canon’s Yeoman’s 
Tale) of wrong temperature, wrong ingredients, wrong material burned for the fire :—and 
everything was begun again. We may marvel that the belief persisted; but there has 
always been and always will be a type of mind which receives Moses’ striking the rock 
as proof of the doctrine that mineral is potentially liquid, or which is impressed by the 
treatment of two substances as father and mother, by the theory that months of slow incu- 
bation in a closed vessel are necessary to produce the offspring. Kings have on occasion 
been as credulous as commoners; the interested belief of Henry VI and Edward IV is 
probably responsible for the mass of treatises on the subject in the late fifteenth century. 
But the failure of the alchemists continued, and the art at length retired from its attempts 
at transmutation and emphasized its philosophical tenets, finding then, as Hathaway remarks, 
the audience which spiritualism and theosophy have today with us. 


PAGE 253] THE COMPEND OF ALCHEMY 485 


6,7. Ashmole reads “O deviaunt fro danger’—and “Fro thys envyos valey”. 

36 ff. Here is stated the basic alchemical position,—that the one Primal Substance, 
containing all things potentially, was separated by the Deity at creation. 

38. begynner is in apposition with thee. 

44. Consumed. Ashmole reads Confused, with better sense. See line 37. 

47-49. Here the rime-scheme is broken; the fifth should rime with the fourth and 
does not. The lines are quite different in Ashmole, where the rime-arrangement is 
preserved. 

49. sum is contrasted with many one of line 48. Norton’s Ordinal (see p. 15 in Ash- 
mole) says that as there be but seven planets among the host of heaven, “Soe among 
millions of millions of Mankinde Scarslie seaven men maie this Science finde.” 

54. the les worlde, the microcosm. Norton’s Ordinal, p. 62 of Ashmole, says that 
among creatures these two alone ‘‘Be called Microcosmus, Man and our Stone”. See tbid., 
p. 85-6 for the stone as the microcosm, and, e.g., Lydgate’s ReasonandSens 540 ff. for man 
as the microcosm; cp. Sieper’s note on line 552 ibid—one of three. Ashmole reads 
one and three. 

59 ff. The movement of idea here seems to be,—“What is this stone, when philoso- 
phers say to those seeking it that each man has it” etc. 

69. The first they means the philosophers, the second “the symple sekers”. 

75. This line, omitted by Corpus, is here supplied from the MS Ff.ii, 23; Stow, in Harley 
367, has it as line 74, and 74 as 75. 

85. Raymondus, Raymund Lully, the thirteenth-century Spanish mystic and philosopher, 
to whom unfounded tradition attributed a number of alchemical works. 

88. sonn and mone, gold and silver; see Note on Alchemy ante. 

106. the fyrst, the first or animal menstruum, sal. 

109. the lyon grene. The glossary of alchemical terms appended by Waite to his ed. 
of Paracelsus says that the Green Lion is mineral, and the base of all menstrua or solvents, 
the fixed part of matter, capable of resisting the action of fire. His strength is “vernant 
and greene evermore enduring”, according to Bloomfield’s Blossoms, in Ashmole p. 312; 
ibid. p. 278, in the “Hunting of the Greene Lyon”, this menstruum is said to be metallic 
vitriol, the priest who weds Sun and Moon, etc. 

111. tyncture, see Note on Alchemy ante, par. 4. 

112. Gebar, Geber, an Arabian chemist of the 8th century, the supposed author of 
numerous alchemical treatises the origin of which is now dated about the thirteenth century. 
See line 64 of the Prohibicio and note. 

113. the second, the second or vegetable menstruum, sulphur, more humid than the first. 

116. formals. Read formall? Both the material and the formal principle must be dis- 
solved, says Ripley. 

117. Ashmole supplies the word. 

120. the thyrd humydyte, mercury, the essence underlying metals. 

122. Hermes tree. In the various processes of alchemical experiment aiming at the 
pure white elixir or stone, a black deposit was encountered. Waite’s transl. of Paracelsus 
1:68 says that “when the philosophers have put their matter into the more secret fire, and 
when with a moderate philosophical heat it is cherished on every side, beginning to pass into 
corruption, it grows black. This operation they call putrefaction, and they call the blackness 
by the name of the crow’s head”. Other names, says Ripley in his first book, on Calcination, 
are the ashes of Hermes tree, or the toad of the earth. Comparison of the “prima materia” 
to a golden tree may be found in Paracelsus as cited, i:54. 

133-34. These lines are closely bound syntactically—by labor exuberate, rendered fruitful 
by labor. This case cited NED. 

136. kyndly acuate, etc., properly refined (“sharpened”) and passed into a pure spirit. 
Ashmole reads “well and kyndly”. 

149. cyrculacyon. Ashmole reads Calcination. 


486 NOTES [PAGE 255 


151. The “circulation”, if properly made, will cause the compound to flow over the 
base as smoothly as wax flows over metal. Then “loose” i.e. dissolve it, etc. 

160. aurwmn potabile, drinkable gold, the elixir of life. Use of this is ascribed to Lully. 
See Lydgate’s Letter to Gloucester, line 46. 

161. hym is inserted from Ashmole’s text. 

166. Ashmole reads “we yt call”. 

169. Our basylyske, etc. The basilisk or cockatrice, the “little king” of serpents, was 
a mythical creature having legs, wings, a serpentine tail, and a puffed crest. Its look was 
possessed of death-dealing power, even from a distance; as Sir Thomas Browne says in his 
Vulgar Errors, “this venenation shouteth from the eye’. Bloomfield the alchemist, in his Blos- 
soms,—see Ashmole, pp. 318, 322,—says that Raymond called the Stone “Basiliske and 
Cocatrice”’; and he himself uses the same terms, by metaphor, to indicate the marvellous and 
unique qualities of the stone.—abiecte, prone? ‘The basilisk could slay without moving from 
its usual position. But Ashmole here reads “hys object’, evidently interpreting sight as 
“olance’”’. 

173. tayneth, kindles. 

174. perfect. Read perfyt, for rime. 

183. The bracketed word is supplied from Ashmole’s text. 

187. theoryk and practycall. See notes on Walton A 332, Dance Macabre 427. 

190 ff., Ripley now enumerates the twelve processes or “gates” of the art of alchemy, to 
each of which he devotes a chapter of his work. The first is of natural calcination, i. e., 
the reduction to powder by means of heat. The second is of solution, the third of separation, 
the fourth of conjunction; by the fifth, “putrefaction”’, the alchemists understood a breaking- 
down process: the sixth step was congelation accompanied by whitening, and the seventh ciba- 
tion, by which alchemists meant the adding of fresh substances to compensate for the evapora- 
tion which had taken place. The eighth process was sublimation, and the ninth fermentation; 
after these followed exaltation, or the raising of qualities to a higher degree, multiplica- 
tion, and finally projection, the end and crown of all. To these twelve chapters Ripley de- 
votes, respectively, 22, 15, 18, 15, 51, 30, 6, 8, 19, 11, 9, and 8 stanzas. A recapitulation of 
11 stanzas then follows and a Prohibicio is appended to all, 


THE PROHIBICIO 


4.. for sune and mone, for Sun and Moon, i. e., for gold and silver. See CanYeoTale 
887. 

6. vermylon, vermilion, the red mercuric sulphide used by alchemists. Later, any red 
pigment. 

15. water corosyves and water ardente, acids and spirits. 

20. calcys. A calx, in alchemy, was a powder produced by thoroughly burning a mineral 
or metal. 

23. Vitriol, says Ripley, is called the Green Lion by fools. See note on 109 ante. 

24. arsnyke. Arsenic, in its alchemical sense, might be the Mercury of the philosophers 
when in the stage of putrefaction. Orpement is yellow arsenic. See CanYeoTale 269-70. 

25. In debily principio, etc. The contrast is between principio and fine. A poor begin- 
ning makes a bad ending. 

29 ff. give a list of salts:—sal ammoniac, sandiver (the liquid saline floating on glass 
after vitrification), sal alkali, alembroth or the double chloride of mercury and ammonium, 
sal altincar or borax, saltpetre, sal of tartar, sal comen or meconic acid, sal-gem or rock- 
salt, vitriol, and sal soda. See CanYeoTale 231 ff. for some of these terms. 

36 ff. Ripley now enumerates the false methods which he unsuccessfully tried; cp. also 
Norton’s list, p. 39 in Ashmole. In chapter 8 of Paracelsus’ Aurora of the philosophers (see 
Waite’s transl. 1:55), Paracelsus says that some have sought the stone in hairs, urine, hen’s 
eggs, milk, in calx of eggshells, in galls of oxen, and in dragon’s blood. Others, he says, 
take a score of lizard-like animals, shut them in a vessel, and make them mad with hunger, 
so that they devour one another until but one survives. This one is then fed with filings 


PAGE 256] THE COMPEND OF ALCHEMY 487 


of copper and it is supposed that by his digestion of the copper he will bring about the de- 
sired transmutation into gold. Such experimenters then burn the lizard into a red powder, 
which they think must be gold; but they are deceived, says Paracelsus. 

37. Es uste, aes ustum, the crocus of copper or crocus of Venus. The method of 
making this is described by Paracelsus, see Waite’s translation i:141-2. The copper, in thin 
plates, is smeared with salt and vinegar, burnt in a blast furnace, and dipped in vinegar 
and sal ammoniac. This process is repeated, the scales being scraped off each time, until 
the plates are nearly consumed. Then the vinegar is extracted by distillation, and is allowed 
to coagulate into a very hard stone, which is the crocus of copper used in alchemy.—crokfere, 
crocus ferri, the crocus or yellow powder of iron; peroxide of iron. 

39. letarge, litharge, protoxide of lead. The rime should be worth a myte——antymony, 
antimony, sometimes classed as a metal, sometimes as a non-metal; one of the elementary 
bodies. Etymology unknown; popularly explained as “anti-moine”, hence called monksbane. 

41. The sowle of Saturn —the sal of Saturn? sugar of lead—arkesyte, marcasite, iron 
pyrites, which often had the lustre of gold. Waite says that all stones which contained any 
proportion of metal were called marcasite by the alchemists—For the wrong line-arrange- 
ment in this stanza see footnote to text. 

43. Oyle of lune, oil of silver. Paracelsus, in Waite’s transl. ii:140, gives a recipe for 
making “the oil and quintessence of Luna”. 

47. aqua vite. Ashmole reads “a quantity”. 

48. In one of the minor alchemical tracts printed by Ashmole, p. 205, the worker is 
bidden to take “the red substance” and break it on a marble stone. 

53. oyle of the snayle. The NED notes the use of snail-oil, as late as 1887, as remedy 
for backache. 

57. rennet. A mass of curdled milk found in the stomach of an unweaned calf, and 
used to curdle milk for cheese. Mentioned among natural liquors by Norton, see p. 79 of 
Ashmole. 

58. slyme of sterrys. According to the NED, the alga Nostoc, which appears as a 
jelly-like mass on dry soil after rain, was popularly supposed to be the remains, or “slime”, 
of fallen stars or meteors. This assertion is found in Paracelsus. 

59. celydony. This probably means not the fabled stone found in the entrails of a 
swallow, but the plant celandine, from which, says Paracelsus, some alchemists have pressed 
a juice, boiled it, put it in the sun, and after coagulation pounded it to a fine black powder, 
which should by projection turn Mercury into Sol, but does not.—secundynes, afterbirths. It 
may be noted that in a Herbal of 1526 amber is said to be the secondine cast by a whale. 

63. for the nonys, suited for the occasion. See note Garl. 267. 

64. on of gevers cokys, one of Geber’s cooks. To the Arabian Geber, as above noted, 
line 112, were attributed many alchemical works. See for this locution Norton’s Ordinal as 
printed by Ashmole, p. 103, “manie of Gebars Cookes”; and see the poem by Sir Edward 
Kelle, printed ibid. p. 324, beginning “All you that faine Philosophers would be And night 
and day in kitchin broyle, Wasting the chipps of ancient Hermes tree,” etc. 

88. newtriall mercurialyte. Ashmole reads A naturall Mercuryalyte. This is the first 
NED citation of mercuriality as “the mercurial part of something”. 

89. Owte of hys mynerue by marte, etc. Ashmole reads “Out of his myner by Arte”, 
etc., and the Corpus MS reads arte. The NED defines minera as the matrix in which a 
precious stone or metal was supposed by the alchemists to grow, and cites Ripley. 


DHE TECOURT OF SAPIENCE 


is neither annotated nor glossed. 


HAWES: THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 


In his dedication to King Henry the Seventh, Hawes makes the conventional protesta- 
tions of his rudeness and dulness, and lauds the ‘“‘fatal fictions’ of his master Lydgate. In 


488 NOTES [PAGE 271 


the tone of his excuses he closely follows Lydgate, whom he treats with the same respect which 
Lydgate showed for Chaucer, and Chaucer for Dante or Virgil. The theory of poetry 
stated in 34-42 is that current, in medieval formal poetry, that, as Spingarn phrases it, “the 
reality of poetry is dependent on its allegorical foundations; its moral teachings are to be 
sought in the hidden meanings discoverable beneath the literal expression”. Thus, John of 
Salisbury praises Virgil, “qui sub imagine fabularum totius philosophiae exprimit veritatem” 
(Polycraticus vi, cap. 22; see ibid., ii, cap. 15). Dante in Inferno ix :63 calls upon his readers 
to observe the “dottrina che s’asconde Sotto il velame degli versi strani.” See note on Churl 
and Bird 29 here, and the paragraphs on allegory in Gen. Introd. 

25. colour crafty. See note on FaPrinces G 46. 

28, 29. Observe stanza-liaison; also between stanzas 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 42 and 43, 186 and 
187, 550 and 551, 555 and 556, 564 and 565, 570 and 571 of the poem. 

33. fatall. See note on line 665 below. 

44. to eschue idlenes. See note on line 1313 below, and on Cavendish; lines 24-30. 

1 ff. When...etc. The usual temporal-astronomical opening; see note on Thebes 1. 

6. depured. ..cruddy. The adjective depured is a favorite with Hawes, and is prob- 
ally taken from the Court of Sapience, where its use is frequent. It is occasional in Lydgate 
and in Bokenam, but it is not in Chaucer. The use of cruddy, ‘‘curdled”, to describe the 
sky, is very interesting to the modern student, who thinks of Shelley's “crudded rack’’ or 
“curdling winds”. The likeness between the torn white clouds of morning and the integument 
of curdling milk is sufficiently marked to rouse curiosity as to Hawes’ intention here. The 
passage is the earliest of the few NED citations. Had Hawes for an instant his “eye on the 
object”, instead of blindly repeating conventional phrases as usual? 

8. gaye and glorious. Used again 200, 1400, 2504, 3181, 4880, 5264, 5616; see note on line 
353. The phrase is in Bradshaw’s St. Werburge i:1786. 

11-13. Possibly a recollection of Chaucer’s opening to the CantTales. 

15-18. In the Example of Virtue, stanza 26 begins “A path we found, right greatly 
used”. 

19. chaunce or fortune. This and similar couplings are very frequent in Lydgate, not 
uncommon in Chaucer. Note the “aventure or sort or cas” of the CTprologue 846, the ‘“‘aven- 
ture or cas” of Knight’s Tale 216, the many cases in Lydgate’s Troy Book, e. g., “of caas or 
aventure” i:34, “hap or sort” iii:5315, etc. Note Dante’s “Se voler fu, o destino, o fortuna”, 
Inferno 32:76. But Hawes’ phrase, as often Lydgate’s, is a synonym instead of a distinction. 

27. The two ways are those of the Active and the Contemplative Life. A choice of 
paths is a frequent motif in medieval literature, but the contrast is oftener between 
Voluptas and Virtus (as in the choice of Hercules) or Idleness and Occupation (cp. 
Pilgrimage of the Life of Man 11232 ff.) or Reason and Sensuality, as in Lydgate’s poem 
637 ff., than as here. 

29 ff. The most famous example of the inscription at entrance, that over the gate of 
the Inferno in Dante’s third canto, is imitated by Chaucer PoFoules 127 ff. There is a brief 
inscription on the entrance tower of the Court of Sapience, see ii:40-42 ibid. See below 78 ff. 

73. shynyng. The print has shydyng; and in 72 it reads portayture. For copper as ma- 
terial for statues cp. note here on Cavendish line 225. For the use of picture as “image” 
the NED gives first the Coventry Plays, then this passage, etc. 

78. situacion.. Hawes frequently, under coercion of rime, uses a sounding Latin abstract 
term in a forced sense, e. g.:— 


. . it shall to him exemplify Pastime 1214 
. . she can exhort Of La Bell Pucell... Pastime 4588 
. . they did then conject To make... Pastime 4896 
. the high promotion Of la Bell Pucell’s domination Pastime 5113 
. I cannot extend the goodlyness Of this palace... Pastime 5198 


87. gaspyng nette. This may be a printer’s error for galpyng, i.e. “gaping, yawning”, 
in which case the rhetorical figure is parallel to Chaucer’s “slepy yerd”, KnTale 529, or to the 


THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 489 


PAGE 273] 


“trembling trompe” of Cavendish’s Metrical Visions 1222. The NED treats the word here as 
asping. 

; a deadly slomber, profound slumber. Cp. Lydgate’s mortal slepe, Troy Book v:2072. 

Note the assonance. 

93. The wakening of the sleeper by a loud or musical sound is a favorite device in 
medieval dream-poetry. The voice of birds is used in Chaucer’s PoFoules, followed by 
Lydgate’s Black Knight, by the Cuckoo and Nightingale, and by Dunbar’s Thrissill and 
Rois. In the BoDuchesse Chaucer uses the castle-bell; in the Parlement of Thre Ages it 
is the blast of a bugle, in Dunbar’s Goldin Targe the noise of guns, which wakes the sleeper. 
Differing modes are the dreamer’s fall from the bridge in Douglas’ Palice of Honour, the 
water springing in his face at the close of the Assembly of Ladies. In the Kingis Quair, 
Fortune takes the poet by the ear. See Cavendish’s Visions 1222. 

97. morow gray. This phrase, used by Chaucer at the opening of his Mars, reappears 
in the Flower of Courtesy 9, the Troy Book i:3078, 3098, iii:3760, v:2958, and often else- 
where in Lydgate. See also the introduction to Orléans, p. 215 here, other cases in Hawes, and 
later English writers such as William Browne the student of Lydgate. 

99. This description of the approach of Fame is one of the few really good bits in the 
poem. 

106 ff. With the arms of Henry VII and of Henry VIII two greyhounds were often 
used as supporters; Fame’s bestowing of them, under the names of Governance and Grace, 
on the youthful prince, is a workmanlike blend of allegory and compliment. 

121. was in my presence. Hawes has of course no notion of following the procedure 
of Dante, who often obtains his “dream-effects” by saying that some one “was there’, with- 
out mentioning the approach or using such words as “came”, “crossed”, “rowed”, etc. 

125. kyng Percius. Perseus, son of Zeus and slayer of Medusa, has no connection in 
myth with the winged steed Pegasus except that in the moment of Medusa’s death her son 
by Neptune, the flying horse, was born. It was Bellerophon, slayer of the Chimaera, who 
rode Pegasus. Rhodenizer suggests that Caxton’s comparison of Perseus’ spreading fame 
to the flying steed led Hawes to this statement; see Recuyell, ed. Sommer i:196. 

129. The request for the name is as usual in medieval work. When names are not given, 
the writer thinks it necessary to apologize; cp. PoFoules 287, BlKnight 124, FlandLeaf 150, 
273, Thebes 3195, AssGods 406, 1542, 1598, etc. 

130-1. The confusion of direct and indirect discourse, and the use of the participle as 
a finite verb, are very Lydgatian. See for the latter Thebes prol. passim. 

136. my horne haue blowen, etc. See Cavendish’s Visions 1222; see this poem 5498, 
or p. 210 of the Percy Soc. edition. See note on FaPrinces B 95 here. 

145. in her digression, i. e., in the decline of the world. 

146, 148. The phrases busy payne, Record of, are Lydgatian. The former occurs again 441, 
727, the phrase busy cure 117, 160. 

148 ff. Fame now discourses on the “first finders” of arts in the golden age. The 
chapter in Lydgate’s FaPrinces, ii:2409 ff., is not used; Hawes takes his material, as Rhod- 
enizer points out, from Caxton’s Recuyell, to which he refers in line 180. He also uses the 
book, calling it “the Trojan story”, in ExamVirtue stanzas 87-89. The “finding” of agri- 
culture by Saturn is described at the very opening of the Recuyell, the mining and working 
of the metals a little later, see p. 117 of Sommer’s edition. 

163 ff. Melizyus. The importance of King Melizyus in this poem should be noted. At 
his court the youthful hero receives his training in the arts of chivalry, and from the king 
personally the order of knighthood. If this poem has a connection with the young prince 
Henry (see note on 106 above) a compliment to the reigning sovereign would be entirely 
in place. In the Recuyell (ed. Sommer i:14), “Mellyseus” is‘lord of the city of Oson; on p. 70 
he is king of Epirus; on p. 144 “the kyng of Mollose”, who has “founden the craft to tame and 
breke horses” leads a hundred Centaurs to the aid of Jupiter. Rhodenizer suggests a con- 
fusion between the two names in Hawes’ mind. The fact that “Millesius”, ic. Thales of 
Miletus, is one of the seven sages in the Court of Sapience has no connection here. 


490 NOTES [PAGE 274 


169 ff. Minerva’s gift of arms to man, and her conquest of the giant Pallas, whose 
name she took, are in the Recuyell (Sommer i:38). See also the ExamVirtue, stanza 37. 
Lydgate’s list makes Pallas the inventor of weaving, see note on 148 above. 

180. Hercules’ life and deeds are fully narrated in the Recuyell. 

196. heyres in fee, the heirs of feudal privileges and obligations. 

205. Gyauntes. A frequent feature of the romances, see e. g. Sir Tristrem, Sir Perceval, 
Sir Beves of Hamtoun. 

210. serpentes. ..blacke and tedious. The latter epithet is used by Lydgate of abstrac- 
tions; cp. “on this mater is tedious for to abyde”, FaPrinces vii:460, “tedius to here’, Troy 
Book iii:5565. He also uses tediouste to mean “prolixity”, cp. DuorMerce 900. But Hawes 
regularly, and Barclay occasionally, use this word of concrete things; Barclay writes of 
a “tedious shout”, of “infernal floodes tedious and horrible’; and Hawes, always coupling 
the word with black, applies it to devils, to serpents, and to the evil spirit expelled from a 
dragon. See this poem 953, 2229, 5090, and ExamVirtue stanza 270. 

211. For beyonde the Percy Society text reads behynde. 

216-17. The outer walls of the tower are “enamelled” as were those of the garden in the 
Roman de la Rose, with paintings. In the Assembly of Gods the outside of the walls of 
Dame Doctrine’s foursquare arbor were painted with figures. See further on in this poem, 
5122-3 and 5177-8, pp. 195, 197 of Percy Soc. edition. 

219. Delete Of? 

221. Ivke as Phebus. See note on FaPrinces G 36 here for this locution in formal verse. 

246. The porter of Venus, in the PoFoules, is Richesse; the portress of the Roman de 
la Rose is Idleness; in the Assembly of Ladies the portress is called Countenance, as here. 
For a full household staff of such allegorical figures see this last, and also the French poem 
printed by Meyer in Romania 15:241-6. See 421 below. 

249. the seuen scyences. Graund Amoure is to receive something parallel to an Uni- 
versity education. Of the seven liberal Arts, the trivium was made up of grammar, logic, 
and rhetoric; the quadrivium of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. See Abelson, 
The Seven Liberal Arts: a study in Medieval Culture, N. Y., 1906. See also the essay on 
these Arts in the Vision Delectable of Alfonso de la Torre, by J. P. W. Crawford in 
Romanic Review 4:58-75, and the earlier paper by d’Ancona in vol. 5 of L’Arte, on the influence 
of Martianus Capella as seen in frescoes, tapestry, etc. of the pre-Renaissance. See the Court 
of Sapience, book ii. 

266. fawning courage, i. e., ingratiating ways, obedient spirit. On the word courage 
see note above on Walton A 310. 

269. Perhaps read ek for ey? 

272. twylight. The first NED citation is from Lydgate’s Troy Book i:2733. Of his 
several uses of the word, that ibid., i1i1:2677 ff. is accompanied by a definition. 

275. fyne force, stern necessity, perforce. See Chaucer’s Troilus v :421. 

281. This chapter-heading is out of place; it should precede stanza 38. 

286. For the awakening by birds cp. note on line 93. 

289. the element, the upper air. See Comus 299. 

292. Document, instruction. In the ExamVirtue prol. 3, Hawes cites St. Paul as saying 
“All that is written is to our document”. He is probably quoting 2d Tim. iii:16. 

293. copper. The use of metal or of precious stones in architecture (also amber, coral, 
and jet) is a constant feature of the romances and of medieval tales of marvel such as 
Mandeville’s Travels. Chaucer’s house of Fame is of beryl, and the palace of Venus, in the 
PoFoules, is of brass set on jasper pillars; in Caxton’ Recuyell the tower in which Danaé 
is imprisoned is “alle of copper”, and Douglas’ palace of Honour is of beryl upon a marble 
rock. 

We may also remember that when Henry VIII later erected his palace of Nonesuch he 
covered the timbers with lead and gilded them. The taste of the time, as well as the 
romance-formula, is expressed in this detail of Hawes’ poem; and much later, when Keats 
in his Endymion or Tennyson in his Palace of Art, was creating a mythical building, he 
sought glitter to enhance its beauty. 


PAGE 277] THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 491 


297. In Lydgate’s Temple of Glass 20 ff. the brilliancy of the building blinds the 
gazer until “‘certain skyes donne” cover “the stremes of Titan”. In Douglas’ Palice of 
Honour, “For brichtnes scarslie blenk thairon I mocht’, says the author. 

301. Auster, the south wind, was supposed to bring mist and fog. 

305. The definiteness of this description suggests that Hawes had at least a picture in 
mind. In the Margarita Philosophica the tower of Philosophy is hexagonal, but the full- 
page cut shows it standing apparently in the street of a city; see reproduction in The Legacy 
of the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1926, to face p. 272. The foursquare base may have been added 
from some woodcut or pageant-setting seen by Hawes; neither Chaucer’s HoFame nor 
Lydgate’s TemGlas nor the Court of Sapience gives any statement as to the shape of the 
rock-base. 

309. The castles of the romances, the palaces of Chaucer, of the Court of Sapience, 
and of Douglas, are all equipped with pinnacles. In Hawes’ ExamVirtue stanza 27 the 
castle of Fortune has high diamond towers “with fanis wavering in the wind’; and Doug- 
las’ Palice of Honour has “goldin fanis waifand with the wind”, also “pinaclis quhilk like to 
Phebus schone”. See also this poem, p. 196 of the Percy Soc. ed. In this last extract, and 
here, the special feature is the musical quality of the wind-moved turrets. Chaucer, HoFame 
1193 ff., fills his pinnacles with enshrined figures of singers; Tennyson, in the Palace of Art, 
tips his turrets with figures which seem to toss incense from golden cups. 

311. propre vyces. The word vyces may mean a screw, a turning shaft; cp. the 
pseudo-Chaucerian Isle of Ladies 1312, in which the writer, ascending “a winding stayer 
keeps hold on “the vice” as he climbs. The adjective means that each pinnacle had its own. 

315. dance Iclipped, etc. The more popular “caroles’ and group-dances bore the 
names of their thematic lines or their place of origin, etc. Some mentioned in the Tournois 
de Chauvenci (ed. Delmotte, Valenciennes, 1835) are Béguignaige, Ermite, Pélérinaige, Pro- 
vencel, le Chapelet. And in line 1528 below the musicians are bidden to play “Mamours 
the swete and the gentill daunce”. 

331. besy court. Probably a misprint for base court, “lower or main court”, the French 
“basse cour”. See lines 2942, 5140, where the correct form appears. 

337. The four rivers of medieval allegorized gardens and palaces were ultimately 
modelled on the four rivers of Paradise, which are named lines 338-9. In the Palace of 
Art Tennyson modifies the convention into four courts, each with “the golden gorge” of a 
dragon spouting forth “a flood of fountain-foam”. 

338. Nysus is an error for Nilus, the Nile. Cp. note on line 87 above. 

347. The crystal windows, usually “depured” as here, are always noted by Hawes. See 
this poem 1360, 1468, 2502, 5176, 5197; see the ExamVirtue stanzas 28, 46, 70, 174. So in 
the romances, e.g., Sir Degrevaunt 1441-54; so in Mandeville’s Travels. 

349-50. Hawes invariably shows great interest in the roofs of his buildings, which 
are either “knotted” curiously or equipped with precious stones, especially the radiant car- 
buncle. See also his ExamVirtue stanzas 32, 238. With this grapevine of gold and rubies 
Rhodenizer compares the similar vine in the hall of the Great Khan, described by Mande- 
ville chap. 23 of his Travels as of gold with clusters of fine grapes made of white crystal, 
yellow topaz, red rubies, green emeralds, and black onyx. Other descriptions of the roof in this 
poem are 1359, 1467, 2504-6, 3180, 3240, 3701, 4112, 5181-6, 5192. See note on Cavendish’s 
Visions line 106; see Shelley’s Revolt of Islam, i, stanzas 51, 52. 

353. gayely glorified. This phrase also occurs 597, 3194, and ExamVirtue stanza 77. 
It is a variant of the phrase gaye and glorious as in line 8, etc. Cp. gaye and gorgeous, 2833. 

356-7. The same two lines recur 1469-70. 

358-420. The coming story of Graund Amoure, up to his wedding, is given by antici- 
pation in this tapestry. There is a curious parallel in the novel This Freedom, temporarily 
popular in the third decade of the twentieth century; its author says of his heroine, “We'll 
fix her stage from first to last, then see her walk upon it.” Events to come are then out- 
lined, after which the narrative begins. Hawes may have been influenced by the Knight’s 
Tale 1175-80. 


492 NOTES [PAGE 278 


421-7. With the careful apportioning of household duties among allegorical female 
figures cp. the Assembly of Ladies, where Discretion is purveyor, Countenance porter, Bel- 
chere marshal, Largesse steward, Remembrance chamberlain, Aviseness secretary, Temper- 
ance chancellor, etc. See also Douglas’ Palice of Honour, ed. Small i:68; and see the 
French poem cited in note on 246 ante. 

453-5. The meaning seems to be that Doctrine has given birth to these seven daughters 
without lessening her own authority. 

462. Congruitie. In the fullpage illustration of the Margarita Philosophica entitled 
“Typus Gramatice”, the learner is presented by Grammar, or Nicostrata, with a key inscribed 
“Congruitas”, which opens the tower of Philosophy. 

463-526 are omitted from this selection of passages. In them Grammar receives and 
addresses the learner, and instructs him in “Donat”, i. the Ars Grammatica Minor of 
Donatus, the usual medieval text-book. Four stanzas epitomize the hero’s study, and six, 
chapter 6 entire, dispose of Logic. Rhetoric, the next sister, is given much more space, 
and discourses through a number of chapters. 

The approach to the Seven Arts is quite different in Hawes from the approach in the 
Court of Sapience. In the earlier work the seven sisters are found in the third court of 
Sapience’s palace, and are by no means the principal figures of the narrative. Much is made 
of their pupils, whose names are carefully given; and the account of their teachings is often 
very technically phrased, and far from puerile as is the instruction here. It might almost 
be suspected from the full treatment of Rhetoric here that the young prince for whom the 
poem was intended was at the time engaged with that particular branch of study. There is 
no such proportion in the Court of Sapience, where Rhetoric has six stanzas and Dialectic or 
Logic seven; and in the Margarita Philosophica the section of Rhetoric fills 23 pages as 
compared with Dialectic’s 64 and the seventy-two devoted to Grammar. 

527-536 are retained from the chapters on Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric now omitted, 
in order to illustrate the extreme definiteness of Hawes’ pedagogic intention. 

659 ff. Hawes now formulates his theory of sound composition, insisting upon the neces- 
sity of a fable of “clowdy fygure”, and censuring the dull rude people who think themselves 
deceived by a poet if they have to interpret his meaning; see note on Churl and Bird 29 ante. 
He then proceeds to give the five parts of Rhetoric. These are, as in the usual medieval 
text-books, ultimately from the pseudo-Ciceronian treatise Ad Herennium, see ibid., i chap. 2; 
but instead of following the order of that treatise, “inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, 
pronuntiatio”’, Hawes puts Pronuntiatio before Memoria. In this he agrees with Lydgate’s 
FaPrinces vi :3319-3360, and with the Margarita Philosophica. See note FaPrinces G 193 here. 

663. obscure reason, “veiled discourse’. The word reason often means “utterance” in 
Middle English; and see the French Li Biaus Desconus, Lydgate’s Troy Book ii:5392, etc. 
etc. Cp. for the theory Dante in the Inferno ix :62-3,—“la dottrina che s’asconde Sotto il 
velame degli versi strani.” See note ante on Churl and Bird 29.—obscure means “hard to 
understand”. First case NED for this sense is of 1495; but see FaPrinces vi:2339, “to whom 
she gaff an ansuere ful obscure.” 

665. fatall scriptures. In Chaucer’s MLTale 163 fatal means “fraught with destiny” ; 
and so in Lydgate, where Minos’ hair is fatal, FaPrinces i:2528. But Hawes gives the word 
the meaning “prophetic”; in ExamVirtue he writes of “poetes that were fatall”; and cp. 
dedication here, line 33, also 751, 813; cp. Skelton’s Garland 34. 

670. wofull hartes. Why woeful? 

674. and, i.e., an, “if”. 

675-79. Hawes’ meaning seems to be that Invention must be supported by Industry. 
The exemplify of 677 may be one of his grandiloquent polysyllables inexactly employed,— 
see introd. ante—or Hawes may mean that the working-out in narrative “exemplum” of 
something found by Invention is necessary to successful literary work. 

692-3. After praising brevity, Hawes says that it is necessary to estimate what length 
of treatment is fitted for the matter in hand. 


PAGE 279] THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 493 


730-32-33. Note the rime on accented -eth, and cp. the procedure of Sir Thomas Wyatt. 

737. solisgyse, “syllogize”, i.e. argue, dispute. First used, according to NED, in the 
Assembly of Gods. 

752. moralyse the similitude, “interpret the fable’. The same phrase is used at the 
opening of The Craft of Lovers, see my Chaucer Manual, p. 420. Skeat in his Chaucer 
Canon, p. 121, thinks the phrase was there a marginal note which has crept into the text. 

757. what for that is an ejaculation. 

763. Chapters X and XI are now omitted. 

1107. derified, “derived”. In the Percy Soc. edition, veryfyde. 

1110. arage. The two examples of this word in NED are both transitive. Hawes 
apparently uses it intransitively, “to be enraged”; such twisting is not uncommon in his 
work, 

1121. Chapters XII and XIII are omitted. 

1255. Mercury northwest. Compare the much-debated passage in PoFoules 117, “As 
wisly as I saw thee north-northwest”, i.e. the planet Venus. Cp. Hamlet’s “mad north- 
northwest”. 

1257. Hoyse vp thy sayle, etc. Cp. opening of the second book of Troilus. 

1259. trace and daunce, manner and procedure. 

1260. thy. The later print, of 1555, reads the. 

1261 ff. Hawes’ allusions to Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate are interesting. I reprint the 
three closing stanzas of the Example of Virtue, from the ,unique copy of de Worde’s 
1510 print in the Pepysian collection, Magdalene College, Cambridge. 


O gower fountayne moost aromatyke 

I the now lake for to depure 

My rudnes with thy lusty retoryke 
And also I mys as I am sure 

My mayster Chaucers to take the cure 
Of my penne for he was expert 

In eloquent termes subtyll and couert 


Where is now lydgate flourynge in sentence 
That shold my mynde forge to endyte 
After the termes of famous eloquence 

And strength my penne well for to wryte 
With maters fresshe of pure delyte 

They can not helpe me there is no remedy 
But for to praye to God almyghty 


for to dystyll the dewe of influence 

Upon my brayn so dull and rude 

And to enlumyn me with his sapyence 

That I my rudnes may exclude 

And in my mater well to conclude 

Unto thy pleasure and to the reders all 

To whome I excuse me now in generall 
Explicit exemplum yirtutis 


1268 ff. In discussing Chaucer’s work, Hawes distinguishes between invention, transla- 
tion, and imagination; this may be a mere coercion by rime, but the description of the 
Legend of Good Women as a translation is noteworthy, also the term “sentencious” as applied 
to the Hous of Fame. Hawes names, of Chaucer’s work, the Hous of Fame, the Legend, 
the Canterbury Tales, Troilus, and “many other bokes” remaining in print. At the time 
Hawes wrote, there was no collected edition of Chaucer; there were ,in existence four 
editions of the Canterbury Tales, two of which were by Caxton; from the same press had 


494 NOTES [PAGE 281 


been issued Troilus, Boethius, the Hous of Fame, and eight of the minor poems, including 
the Parlement of Foules. There was no text of the Legend in print when Hawes wrote. 

1286 ff. A selected list of Lydgate’s work follows. It runs: the Life of Our Lady, St. 
Edmund, the Fall of Princes, the Churl and Bird, the Court of Sapience, the Troy Book, a “boke 
solacious” of gods and goddesses, and the Temple of Glass. Of these eight, the first, 
fourth, fifth, and eighth had been printed by Caxton, and the Assembly of Gods (the 
“boke solacious”’?) and Fall of Princes by de Worde, anterior to the date at which Hawes 
is writing. This attribution of the Temple of Glass to Lydgate is accepted by scholars, 
hut neither the Assembly of Gods nor the Court of Sapience is viewed as his. See p. 100 
here. 

1286. rvyally. The text reads nyally. 

1297. See note on Churl 29. 

1313. the tyme of slouthe. This is corrected by the 1555 editor to The synne, etc. Sloth 
was_one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and writers of this period freqently state that their 
purpose in writing is “to eschewe idilnesse, modir of vycis’. See, e.g., Lydgate’s FaPrinces 
i:4685-6, vi:234, vii:696-7, etc. Cp. the Franciscan phrase “ad repellendam otiositatem”; and 
see Caxton’s insistence on writing as safeguard against sloth, in the Recuyell and elsewhere. 
See note on lines 24-30 of Cavendish’s Visions. 

1318. ballade royall. The application of “rime royal” to the seven-line stanza rimed 
ababbcc is by the NED et al. ascribed to its use in the post-Chaucerian “Kingis Quair” 
of King James of Scotland. MacCracken however points out the term in Quixley’s ?1402 
translation of Gower’s French ballads; see MLNotes 24:31. 

1330. The 1555 text reads “to haue fame for their mede”, supplying the omission. 

1334-37. According to Hawes, the making of love-songs was as favored an occupation 
at the court of Henry VII as we know it to have been at the court of his son. 

1349. See Chaucer’s Troilus 1:642-3 for this more or less proverbial parallel between the 
heightening of white by black and the aggrandizement of a great writer by a humble follower. 
It is especially developed by Lydgate, FaPrinces vi:2969-82; see also his Temple of Glass 
1250, and cp. Skelton, Garland of Laurell 1210, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, iii:9, 2, 4. See note 
FaPrinces G 33-35 here. 

1351. Chapter XV is omitted from these extracts. 

1401 ff. Another temporal-astronomical beginning, as in Lydgate’s Thebes 1 ff., or at 
the opening ofthis poem. It is now May; the sun is in Gemini. 

1404. darke Dyane, the unillumined moon. 

1412-14. base organes, etc. In the Margarita Philosophica the woodcut of “Typus 
Musica” represents Music as a female figure holding a placard of musical notation and 
surrounded by performers on various instruments, harp, viol, organ, etc. With the chapter 
is a diagram of the groupings of musical tones. Under the all-inclusive Bis Diapason are the 
subdivisions Diapason and Diapason-cum-Diapenthe; under the Diapason or octave appears 
Diapenthe the interval of a fifth, and under Diapenthe the Diatessaron or Tetrachord, the 
interval of a fourth. 

4213. Another temporal-astronomical opening, as in 1401 above. Lydgate, in his Troy 
Book, frequently marks thus a new phase of his story. 

4215. Aquarius is next Capricorn in the Zodiac. 

4216. Janus bifrus. This should be “bifrons”, or two-browed; the print failed to recog- 
nize the horizontal mark over the vowel indicating an omitted ‘nasal. Janus, in Roman 
mythology, presided over the beginnings of all things, was porter of Heaven, and guardian 
of gates on earth. He was represented with two heads because every door looks two ways. 

4224-5. corall....rockes ... toppes. Hawes probably uses coral to make the land- 
scape magical. According to Bartholomaeus’ De Proprietatibus Rerum, coral was a tree as 
long as it remained under water, but on being drawn out turned to stone. Note the assonance 
of rockes: toppes. This un-Chaucerian license is fairly frequent in Lydgate. 

4225. popingayes, parrots, favorite birds with medieval courts because of their decorative 
plumage and peculiar ways. 


PACE 282] THE PASTIME OF PLEASURE 495 


4230. blasyng, i.e. blazoning, or interpreting the devices upon a shield. 

4255 ff. Take hede, etc. In the romance of Sir Degore 321-2 (see Utterson’s Select 
Pieces of Early Popular Poetry, 1817, i:113-155) the giant is described “to loke on as I you 
tell As it had bene a fiende of hell.” So in Guy of Warwick, when the hero encounters 
the giant Colbrond:—“Swiche armour as he hadde opon Ywis no herd ye neuer non Bot 
as it ware a fende of helle” (see ed. of 1840, p. 393). On p. 297 of the jsame text it is said of 
the Saracen giant that ‘““He semed as it weren a fend bat comen weren out of helle.” 

4261. In Caxton’s Recuyell, Hercules encounters the giant Cerberus with three heads, then 
the Hydra with seven heads. 

4266. cause encline, cause to encline. Hawes’ twisting of word-use again. 

4288. be displease. There is apparently text-corruption here. 

4291. stremer grene. Green was the color of fickleness. 

4301-3. Clumsy change from indirect to direct discourse. 

4307. wondersly wrough. The reprint of 1555 reads wonderly wroth, which restores the 
rime. Note reading of line 346. 

4319. Hawes gives a name to his hero’s sword, a trait frequent in the romances. Cp. 
Arthur’s Excalibur, Sir Beves’ Morgelai, Grine’s Erkyn, Horn Childe’s Bittofer, Torrent’s 
Adolake. And in the Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, Moses gives Manhode the sword 
Versatile, Grace Dieu giving him the sword Righteousness. 

4332. what for that. An ejaculation, as in line 757 above. 

4344-45. In Caxton’s Recuyell, ed. Sommer i:26, Hercules remembers Megaera as he 
fights. fk 

4358. venyme should be venum, “venom”, as in the 1555 text. 

4363. The 1555 text garbles demeaned you to demaunded. 

4364. brayed. This term was formerly applied to the voices of various animals. Caxton 
uses it of the elephant, and in book ii of the Recuyell the lions attacking Hercules “brayed 
in her throtes”. The Italian poet Pugliese, of the 13th century, wrote “Gli auscelletti odo 
bradire”, applying the word of same etymology to birds. 

4386. Upon, at opening of the line, has apparently been intruded into the text from 
the second half-line. It is not in the 1555 edition. 

4406. The verb talk is rarely used by Chaucer, somewhat more freely by Lydgate. 

4411. The hero’s name is asked; see note on 129 above. 

4416. The 1555 text reads: “to attayne the same’. 

4426. The allusion is to Chaucer’s Troilus i:358 ff. The movement of thought in 4427 is 
“and desired to see her still longer”. 

4431. Chaucer uses wade of conversation in Troilus ii:150; so does Capgrave in his 
St. Katherine iv:1624, and Cavendish as here, line 1218. For the ship-metaphor see note on 
1257 ante. 

444-45. The chapter-heading is out of place; it should precede line 4438. 


NEVILL AND COPLAND: THE CASTELL OF PLEASURE 


DIALOGUE 


1 ff. Copland uses his participles very clumsily. Putting a semicolon or full stop at 
the end of line 4, we may paraphrase: “Your mind being considered (etc.), the effect being 
regarded (etc.), your circumstance and labor is of great efficacy (for him) who will examine 
it.” Although the word “concern”, line 6, is used by Lydgate to mean, “discern, perceive’,— 
see FaPrinces i:6719, iii:1346, 4766, etc.—it seems here to have more the later sense of 
“relate to, bear on”. The last three lines of the stanza might then be paraphrased: “To adopt 
your moral teachings has a bearing on reason, (and tends) to draw young hearts with 
affection.” 

Beside this loose management of the participle, which reminds us of Lydgate, and the 
inversions, we observe in Copland’s opening compliment to Nevill a further beclouding of the 
intention by the arbitrary use of Latin abstract words wrenched from their normal meaning. 


496 NOTES [PAGE 288 


This wrenching, we may remark, is not characteristic of Lydgate, but is frequent in Hawes; 
see for instance the note on line 78 of the Pastime of Pleasure. But such flourishing of 
terms does not go through Copland’s introduction; although it reappears in his envoy, the 
most of these stanzas express the opinion of a practical business man/or a comment on the 
degeneracy of the times. 

With this dialogue as!introduction compare the method of Hoccleve in opening both his 
De Regimine Principum and his series of poems intended for Gloucester. 

16. inhabyte with Beaute. See line 107; see Lydgate’s Troy Book i:854. 

32. exployntyng. Read “exploytyng”, \i.e., “succeeding”. See Lydgate’s FaPrinces v:713, 
vi:517, 542, etc. He uses it to mean “make to succeed”, and the noun expleit as synonymous 
with “good speed”. 

38. doost should be dooth. 

43. At your instaunce. Copland perhaps means an arrangement such as was frequent 
between Caxton and his noble patrons, who engaged to take “a reasonable number of copies” 
and to give him some material help otherwise. See p. 14 here. 

47. Tables / cayles / and balles, i.e., backgammon, ninepins, and ball-playing. 


THE CASTELL OF PLEASURE 


1 ff. As Chaucer had done in the Book of the Duchesse and Parlement of Foules, Nevill 
starts his work with the reading of an old book, in this case the Metamorphoses of Ovid. 
He chances on the story of Phoebus’ wounding by the arrow of Cupid, and his consequent 
passion for Daphne. His lines 13-48 should be compared with Metam. i:454-549. 

11. were compenable, “were associated”, i.e., what the conversation was. 

17. becomes me. Ovid, “decent umeros nostros”. 

19-20. Nevill here muddles the Latin. It is Cupid, not Phoebus, who says (Metam. 
i:464-5), “quantoque animalia cedunt cuncta deo, tanto minor est tua gloria nostra.” That is, 
“by as much as all living things are less than deity, by so much less jis thy glory than 
mine.” To this add the typographical error of the inserted at in line 19. 

38. dame saunce mercy. As Daphne was vowed to virginity and the service of Diana, 
it may be that dame here is miswritten for Diane. 

49. at a syde. Perhaps “at the moment of departure”. Early Eng. sithe meant “a going, 
a journey”. The last NED citation in this meaning is from the ,Towneley Mysteries, 1460. 

49 ff. The ice of convention falls from Nevill’s eyes and tongue in this stanza; 
but the conventional dream nevertheless follows. The lines, 49-60, are included in Fliigel’s 
Neuengl. Lesebuch, 1895, p. 17. 

63. enhaunce. The NED gives one example, from 1632, of the “misuse” of this word 
to mean “surpass”. This appears to be its force here, “overmaster”. 

79. The twelve-line stanza is now exchanged for the eight-line. 

84. in one, i.e., in one man? 

88. solde and bought. A proverbial expression, “all over with, done for”. Cp. Richard 
Bact V5) sca od00: 

89. it is done me, etc. “I am given to understand.” Cp. “I do you to wit.” 

95-6 are apparently the author’s reply to Morpheus. 

105 is spoken by the author, the rest of the stanza by Morpheus. 

109. apparage is explained by NED as “rank”, and illustrated from Hawes’ ExamVirtue. 
Both there and here the sense “prowess” would better fit. 

115. gargeled galeryes. See note on 178, and cp. Surrey’s Complaint at Windsor, where 
the ladies watch the contestants from above. 

119. toke a dyreccyon. Cp. Hawes’ wresting of word-meaning for rime; see note on 
the Pastime line 78. 

133. Nevill’s meaning is that from courage comes the delight of the tourney. He may 
be using wre in a double sense, the ore from the Hill of Courage and the practice that upholds 
“doughty disport”; (ure can derive from augurium, “destiny’, opera, “custom, practice”, or 
hora, “hour”. Lydgate-MSS usually spell it ewre). 


PAGE 291] THE CASTELL OF PLEASURE 497 


151. Nevill, like Hawes, uses alliteration as a verse-ornament. 

178. Gargaled, etc. The tower is “gargoyled” with various animals, among which the 
greyhound is first mentioned. See note on Hawes 106; and in 307 of the Pastime the Tower 
of Doctrine is “Gargeyld with grayhoundes and with many lyons”. In chap. 26 of the Pastime 
the Tower of Chivalry, on a rock, is quadrant and is “gargeylde wyth beastes”. 

183. grephyn, “griffin”. These mythological creatures, called by Aeschylus the “‘sharp- 
beaked unbarking dogs of Zeus”, were mentioned by Pliny as “ferarum volucre genus”. They 
were winged lions with the beaks of birds and with blazing eyes; they were supposed to 
guard the treasures of the Ind from those who would seize gold. They symbolized strength 
and guardianship, and their duty placed them in watchful antagonism to men. Hence, proba- 
bly, Nevill speaks of their being “desolate of lyuely creature”, and terms them “golden”. But 
the “ruful mone” is perhaps for rime. 

185-6. Nevill follows the procedure of Hawes in describing the “bejewelled” architecture 
and the windows. See notes on 347, 349-50 of the Pastime. 

191-3. The two ways and their two “scryptures” are as in the Pastime 27-42; see note 
on 27 ibid. for Hercules’ choice between Pleasure and Virtue, a choice referred to by Nevill 
in line 212 below. 

209. Nevill muses as did Hawes line 44 of the Pastime. 

214. In the fable of Prodicus, fifth century B.c., Hercules does not see two ways, but 
two female figures who discourse of their different ways, that of Pleasure and that of 
Virtue. Barclay (see ed. Ship of Fools by Jamieson 1i1:287) says however that he saw in a 
dream the two ways. The more obvious story-form must therefore have displaced the earlier. 

_ 425. She is Eloquence, who is escorting the dreamer. 

427. to lene at the herbar, to listen outside the flower-walls of the arbor, as in La Belle 
Dame sans Merci 195. 

830 ff. The Ubi Sunt motif; see FaPrinces, extract C here, introduction. 

840. the foure doctours, i.e., Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Gregory. 

872. thereof, i.e. of his dream. 


NEVILL: ENVOY 


1. Go humble style, etc. See note on Churl 379. 

4. arrect, etc. The first NED case of to arrect or prick up (the ears) is of 1646. 

12. Ouyde ... low style. Nevill compares his work with that of Ovid in its lack of 
“rethoriques”. See Lydgate’s definition of “humble style” in FaPrinces vi:102-4: 


Nat maad corious be non auauntage 
Of rethoriques with musis for to stryue 
But in pleyn foorme ther deedis to descryue. 


Ovid’s style appears to us decidedly rhetorical; but Nevill continues by pointing out that 
his simple matter is not worthy the “high style” befitting wise and serious stories. The 
term “high style” was used by Chaucer in the Clerk’s prol. and Tale 41,1092; see my Chaucer 
Manual, p. 252. On the “colors of rhetoric’ see note FaPrinces G 46 here. 

13. to auoyde ... slouthe. See note on Hawes’ Pastime, line 1313. 

14. with cloke, i.e., under a fable or allegory. See note on Churl line 29, and cp. Hawes’ 
Pastime, lines 659 ff. 


COPLAND: ENVOY 


16. This rubryke, i.e., this part or section of the work, with’ its heading. Titles or sum- 
maries were usually written in red, “rubricked”; and the term was extended to mean parts of 
the work thus marked. 

18. toke effect. Again a wrenching of word-meaning; see notes on Nevill 119 and on 
the Pastime, line 78. 


498 NOTES [PAGE 300 


BARCLAY: THE SHIP OF FOOLS 


7. doth. The plural in°-th is frequent in Barclay; cp. lines 23, 206, 249, 6997, 7001, 
8490, 8509. See also Walton’s Boethius A 105 and Note, Cavendish 1261 and Note. 

20. Pallas and Minerva. For this division of the goddess see Dunbar’s Goldin Targe 78. 
Hawes’ Pastime, chap. 36, lines 4914 etc., makes “dame Pallas” a goddess, while in chap. 27, 
lines 3271 etc., Minerva is at the court of king Meligius as instructress in arms. A similar 
splitting of Tullius and Cicero is made in the Confessio Amantis iv :2647-8, and earlier by 
Alars de Cambrai as cited Hist. Litt. de la France xvi:218. Alars also made Virgilius and 
Maro two people, as John of Salisbury does with Suetonius Tranquillus, see his Polycraticus 
viii:18 ad finem. For the reverse error see note on Brutus Cassius, FaPrinces E 63 here. 

27. lyke a Monster. In the time of Shakespeare and Jonson, London abounded in 
exhibitors of “monsters”, creatures which either were abnormal in physical structure or 
had been taught tricks; see The Tempest II, scene 2, and III, scene 2, also Jonson’s Bartholo- 
mew Fair V, scene 3. This passage shows that earlier in the century the “monster” was 
exhibited, behind closed doors for better security of the owner’s income. 

36-7. The marginal note is ‘Horatius in sermonibus”. The second satire of Horace’s 
first book begins:—‘‘Ambubiarum conlegia, pharmacopolae, Mendici, mimi, balatrones, hoc 
genus omne.” Locher’s Latin uses the word pharmacopolas in line 21; hence probably the 
reference. 

43-49. The marginal note is: “Eccles. primo. Peruersi difficile corriguntur Et stultorwm 
infinitus est numerus. Prouer. xxvi.’ The citation is from Ecclesiastes i:15; Proverbs 
xxvi deals with fools. 

68. by planettes. The navigator finds in the stars adverse conditions. 

74 is a proverb; cp. Lydgate’s Dance Macabre 344, “Who al enbraceth litel shal restreine”, 
and its French original, “Qui trop embraisse mal estraint’, line 271 on p. 431 here. The 
same French sentence is at the head of a poem by Deschamps (see ed. by Tarbé i:32). 
Chaucer quotes it as a proverb in the tale of Melibeus, and it appears in the “Proverbs” 
ascribed to him. 

75. London Rockes. This phrase I cannot satisfactorily explain. I find no evidence as to 
actual rocks in the Thames, nor any jesting use of the phrase to describe the low marshy 
banks of the river. It is possible that there is here a misprint of Rocks for Docks, a term 
used as early as Douglas’ Aeneid and Leland’s Itinerary to denote the bed in which a ship 
is anchored. 

78. arere. Apparently an exclamation:—“Get back!” In Jamieson’s ed. of the whole 
poem 1: p. 297 we find the foolish night-serenaders made to “‘stande arere” by missiles flung 
from the windows. See also Eclogue iv:655. Cp. Avaunt! 

85. myrrour. An exceedingly common metaphor in medieval literature. The number of 
volumes entitled Speculum or Mirror,—Ecclesiae, Laicorum, Peccatoris, Historiale, Myrrour of 
Life, Mirouer du Monde, Miroir aux Dames, Mirror for Magistrates, etc., is beyond count. 
The metaphor was as common in discourse as in title, cp. e.g., Lydgate’s Dance Macabre 
31, 637; cp. line 13186 here, etc., etc. 

86-7. Beside these lines the print has “Speculum stultorum” in the margin. 

92-3. In the margin the print has “Seneca Prouer.”, transferred from Locher’s Latin. 
Locher’s text at that point is: “Nemo caret vitiis, nemo est sine crimine vite.” Just below, 
against 95-98, is: “Quis potest dicere mundum est cor meum purus sum a peccato.’ This 
is from Proverbs xx:9. In 93 the bracketed word is from the 1570 ed.; our text reads im. 

105. babyll, i.e., bauble, the imitation sceptre carried by the professional fool, resembling 
the modern “rattle” of a small child. See 502. Cromwell termed the Parliamentary mace 
“that bauble”. 

114. insygne. French enseigner, “educate”. Note Barclay’s use of a French term in 
rime. In the margin by this stanza is ‘““Pedes enim eorum ad malum currunt et festinant 
ad effundendum sanguinem. Prouer. i. Ps. xlviii.” The citation is from Proverbs 1:16, 
but ends “ut effundant sanguinem”. There is a similar text in Isaiah lix:7, but not in Psalms. 


PAGE 302] TEE SHIP“OF FOOLS 499 


126. delicious, i.e., sensual, voluptuous. Caxton in the Golden Legend speaks of monks 
as “ouer delicious”; and Palsgrave in his 1530 dictionary defines it as “daynty mouthed or 
delycate”. 

131. The 1570 text changes Pynsones to the Printers. 

134. In the margin is “Scribendi causa’. The poet’s conception of his duty and function, 
from Plato to George Meredith, is one of great interest. Browning, in The Glove, writes, 
“For I—so I spoke—am a poet; Human nature,—behooves that I know it!” Meredith (Melam- 
pus) says that vitality resides in song solely “where earth and her uses to men, their 
needs, their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong.’ Bunyan says that the 
Pilgrim’s Progress was written “mine own self to gratify’. Dante in the Vita Nuova 
says that he cannot do his lady justice with his praises, but speaks “to discharge his mind”. 
None of these was the average medieval position. Barclay, translating and expanding the 
prologue of Locher to the Ship, declares that no poets write unless it be for the reader’s 
pleasure or profit, or both; that poets teach what is good and what is evil, and that their 
intention has ever been to reprove vice and to.commend virtue. He is undertaking the work 
to promote wisdom and to cleanse the vanity and madness of foolish people. Again, in the 
brief prose “Argument” just before the first book, Barclay says that he writes both to 
“auoyde the execrable inconuenyence of ydilnes, whyche (as saint Bernard sayth) is moder 
of all vices”, and to deride fools. Henryson commends the sweet rhetoric of fables, but says 
they were first written to reprove misliving. The disappearance of the plea of “virtuous 
besynesse” as a literary motive and the frank recognition of pleasure to individual or group 
in its place is a mark of the Renaissance, and runs parallel with the crowding out of allegory 
by pure story. See notes on Hawes’ Pastime 1313, Cavendish 24-30; see FaPrinces iii: 
3823-36. 

142. inconuenyence, “impropriety, unseemly wrong-doing”, as in lines 534, 600 below, and 
often in this period. Cp. Cavendish 1371. In line 226 it means “injury”, as in Hawes’ 
Pastime, chap. 10, line 818, a passage not reproduced here. 

148. In the margin is “Excusatio scribentis”. 

154. A passage of prose follows, introducing the “Boke”. It is headed by Jamieson 
i:17 “The Argument”, and may be read either there or in Fliigel’s Neuengl. Lesebuch, p. 104. 

156. pompe. Is this misprinted for “poupe”’, the poop or high afterpart of the ship 
where the master stands, as in 162? The writing pompe is retained in the 1570 text; and cp. 
Cocke Lorels Bote, “some roped ye hoke, some ye pompe and some ye launce.” The corres- 
ponding Latin line is: “rego docili vastaque vela manu”. 

162. In the margin appears “Diodorus Siculus 1i.i.”, and just below it “Ecclesi. xij”. The 
opening chapter of Diodorus the Sicilian’s (Greek) Biblioteca Historica lauds the endeavor 
of historians to teach mankind “praeteritorum exemplis quid nobis appetendum sit quidve 
fugiendum”. This Latin citation is from the transl. of the first five books of Diodorus by 
Poggio Bracciolini, printed 1472, 1476, 1496, ?1515, etc. We do not know whether Poggio, 
or Skelton’s transl. of Diodorus, or a mere transfer of the marginal reference from Locher, 
is behind Barclay’s use of the name here. The Ecclesiastes reference is to verse 129 :— 
“Faciendi plures libros nullus est finis; frequensque meditatio carnis afflictio est”. 

166-68. In the margin is:—“Dabitur liber nescientibus literas. Esaie. xxix”. See xxix :12 
ibid. 

181. comon, commune, talk. A frequent word with Barclay; see, e.g., Eclogue iv :472, 
541. The Cawood print of 1570 changes to comment. 

183. Tholomeus. In the margin is:—“Ptolomeus philadetemus meminit Jo Sephus 
li.xij”. In Josephus’ Antiquitates Judaeorum xii cap. 2 it is said of Ptolemy Philadelphus’ 
library that the king endeavored to gather all the books of the known world. Locher’s text 
has “philadelphus’, accurately. 

190. In the margin is:—“Qui parwm studet parum proficit glo. Li. vnicuigue C. de prox. 
sacr. scri.” I have not worked out this reference. 

194. The 1570 edition reads in, our text it. 

209. the yresshe game. “Irish” was a game resembling backgammon, but more compli- 
cated. Nares in his Glossary refers to the “Compleat Gamester” of 1680. 


500 NOTES [PAGE 303 


216. Concedo. “I assent.” The Latin is:—“At si cum doctis versor concedere malo 
Omnia: ne cogar fors verba latina profari’, etc. Watson translates :—‘I shall condyscende 
vnto all theyr preposycyons for fere that I sholde not be reproched of that that I haue so 
euylly lerned.” 

231. Honyngton or of Clyst. These small Devonshire parishes,—Honiton and six places 
named Clyst,—were in the vicinity of St. Mary Ottery, where was Barclay’s chaplaincy at 
this time. What personal animus may lie behind the allusion we do not know; but Pompen, 
p. 207, notes that the incumbent of Honiton, from 1505 till 1517, was Henry Ferman or 
Feyrman. See Pompen as cited; see Jamieson i:221; and cp. Skelton’s Ware the Hauke. 

235. The 1570 text omits to Pryson. 

245. The last line of Locher’s Latin at this point is:—‘Auriculis asini tegitur sed magna 
caterua”; in the margin beside which is ‘“Persius’’. 

250. In the margin is:—“Translatio a somniantibus”. 

252. occupye. This word frequently means “to use’ in late Middle English. In Cay- 
endish’s life of Wolsey we hear of “broken plate and old, not worthy to be occupied”. See 
Exodus xxxviii:24, Judges xvi:11. In Lydgate, however, this sense is infrequent, and his usage 
is more commonly like ours. It is reflexive in FaPrinces A 398. 

Two chapters are now omitted, on Evil Counsellors and on Avarice. 

456 ff. Extravagantly cut and ornamented dress and headgear, curled, frizzed, and padded 
hair, as worn by upper-class men and women, were constant topics of satire in this period. 
See the dramas, from the 25th Coventry Piay and the Woodstock Play to Medwall’s Nature 
and its figure of Pride. See the introduction to Horns Away, p. 110 here, with refs. to 
contemporary verse and pictures. See lines 514, 533, 541, 8479-85 below; and with it cp. the 
sobriety of Henry VII, as described by John Blacman in his memoir of Henry, Cambridge, 
1919, 

466. The 1570 edition reads :—“you wiser then God omnipotent’. 

470. “The mode of dress has deteriorated. All sobriety is gone’. 

498. of the first yere, etc. That is, newly raised in rank; a metaphor from hunting. The 
antlers of a buck are said to be of the “first head” until he is at least five years old. “Of 
the first year” would be a still greener dignity—foxfurred. Furs were most carefully pre- 
scribed and proscribed by the various English Acts of Apparel. By that of 1363 no yeoman 
or his family was to wear any rich fur, “mes soulment d’aignel, conil, chat, et goupil”, i.e., 
lamb, cony, cat, and fox. In the petition of 1402 no “vadlet” is permitted any fur but lamb, 
fox, cony, and otter. By the law of 1465 sable and ermine were restricted to lords, and by 
that of 1509-10 sable could be worn only by earls and yet higher ranks. A foxfurred gentle- 
man is therefore so new in gentlemanhood that he still wears the fur of his native yeoman 
class. 

509,514. to lowe probably alludes to the cut of clothing at the neck. While in Henry 
VI’s time both sexes covered the neck and throat completely, in the reign of Henry VII men 
as well as women were bare-necked. The English fop at this period cut his doublet in a V 
as deep as that of a modern woman of fashion. A similar change from one extreme to the 
other may be seen in the styles of hair and shoes; cp. notes on 541, 8480 below, and the dif- 
ference between the headdress of Richard II’s time and the low flat cap of latter Edward 
IV, as described in the introd. to Horns Away ante. 

512-13. chaynes as withthes, chains like (plaited?) golden rushes. 

515. The wearing of “grosses Maunches pendants ouertez ne closez”, i.e., big hanging 
sleeves open or closed, was petitioned against by the Commons in 1402. In 1406 they repeated 
the request to the King that such sleeves, and long gowns touching the ground, be forbidden; 
they also asked that sleeves “tranchez des peces”, i.e., slashed, jagged in patterns at the edges, 
be prohibited. At this time sleeves were often made separate from the rest of the garment, 
of very rich stuffs, and either cut into roses, birds, etc., along the border, or trailing nearly 
to the ground, or padded to great dimensions,—“blasinge”. By the 1465 Act of Apparel, early 
in Edward IV’s reign, no yeoman or man of lower degree was to stuff his doublet with any 
bolster, wool, or cotton. See the prologue to the 25th Coventry Play, where Lucifer describes 
a dandy’s costume. 


PAGE 306] THE SHIP Or FOOLS 501 


In France especially the sleeve was further adorned by devices and mottoes, a custom 
followed by the higher classes in England. Charles of Orléans wore on his sleeve the words 
of a song and its notes, embroidered in seed pearls and precious stones. In the Epithalamium 
for Gloucester, 112, 161, are mentioned ‘‘mottoes” which may have been used in this manner. 
And it may be remarked that in the MS of the Fall of Princes, formerly Phillipps 4254, two 
of the miniatures show gallants who have devices embroidered on the left leg of the hose. 

523. Rubbe. This orthography appears several times in the 1509 print of the Ship; see 
Jamieson i:80, ii:101. On ii:202 it is spelled rebbing. 

527-9. The garments of a condemned criminal were sold after he had been hanged at 
Newgate. His body remained hanging, at least on a country gallows, until the neck broke 
away. 

533-6. The manuscript-illuminations and the monuments of the time bear Barclay out 
in this statement; and the Acts of Apparel not only bewail the “inordinate Aray”, but 
endeavor to force men and women to dress “according to their degrees”. Impoverishment 
of the less wealthy, and class-confusion, were the arguments of the Commons in their various 
petitions to the sovereign. From that of 1363, which presents both these reasons, to that of 
1465, there were three abortive attempts at controlling dress, the petitions of 1379, 1402, and 
1406; only the second of these drew an assent, a very general one, from the king. See Rotuli 
Parliam. ii:278-82, iii:66, 506, 593, v:504. The law of 1465 was re-enacted in 1477 (Rot. 
Parl. vi:188-9), when the Commons declare that it had not been enforced, and that matters 
are worse than ever. There is then provided a system of collecting fines; but it was of no 
avail, and in 1482 (Rot. Parl. vi:220), the law was again enacted. Nothing more appears 
until the opening of Henry VIII’s reign, 1509-10, when an Act of Apparel was passed 
(Statutes of the Realm iii:8-9), and is re-enacted 1514-15 and 1532-33. There was another 
such statute under Mary; see Statutes iv:239. That all the statutes on the matter were 
virtually a dead letter may be inferred from the satires of the two centuries. 

541. set Busshes. See 8480 below. A gallant’s hair, from the reign of Richard II to 
that of Edward IV, was curled and bushed like that of a Polynesian savage. In Medwall’s 
play of Nature, printed 1516-20, the character of Pride says that he knits up his long hair at 
night and combs it out crisp and shining for the daytime. Other allusions by Barclay are in 
Jamieson ii:97, 268. 

Fraustadt points out, p. 41 of his monograph as ante, that Barclay changes Locher’s 
Ethiopians, as the source of this fashion, to “men of Inde’. The same change is made in 
another passage of Barclay; see Jamieson ii:264. It is possibly because Vasco da Gama’s 
opening of the sea-route to India in 1498, between the Latin and the English versions of the 
Ship, had created a general European interest in India; but it is also true that ‘‘the gretter 
Inde” had represented fabulous wealth and incredible marvel to the Western imagination 
long before da Gama. Some part in this change made by Barclay was perhaps due to the 
convenience of Jnde as a rime-word. 

This fashion, like that of neckwear, headdresses, and shoes, changed to the extreme when 
it changed. In 1521 Francis the First of France introduced the mode of close-cut hair, and 
a little earlier the long peaked men’s shoes were replaced by the clumsy broadtoed footwear 
seen in the portraits of Henry VIII. 

542-3 etc. fleinge brayne. The “inconstant mind” of the gallant is expressed by his 
extravagant parti-colored often-changed clothing. 

553. in the Quere, in the choir. Their fathers were mass-priests? 

555. Barclay censures dresses laced in the back, and high pointed headgear. 

556. Delete the period at the end of the line as in the print. 

557. sadel. I can throw no light here except to query if Barclay can mean the long train, 
often worn gathered up and fastened at the back of the waistband. 

558-9. decke slut. Copyntanke. The word copyntanke (copatain in Shakespeare’s Tam. 
Shrew V, 1:69), is first used here, according to the NED, and is found only in XVIth-century 
texts. It means a high sugarloaf hat, and its etymology, although probably French, is not 
clear. 


502 NOTES feace god 


The only meaning for the word slut which seems applicable here is that of “an oven- 
mop”, recorded from Shropshire in the Engl. Dialect Dictionary. It is possible that Barclay 
first disrespectfully terms the high hat with its mass of ribands and veils a “deck mop”, and 
then makes amends by giving it its foreign name. Cp. Lydgate’s “humorous” procedure in 
FaPrinces ii :3360 ff. 

575. By letting the tonsure grow the cleric “re-forms” himself to the appearance of a 
layman. 

597. your Prynce. The Ship of Fools was published in December 1509, and Henry VII 
died in April of that year. The phrases here used seem more applicable to him than to 
Henry VIII, and this early part of the translation may have been executed before his death. 


6930 ff. In Jamieson’s edition of Barclay, this chapter is at p. 23 of vol. ii. 

6953. “And then they take measures to know”, etc. 

6968. These place-names are largely adopted from the Latin. Moryans, or Barbary 
Moors, are also mentioned in Eclogue v; Athlant and Calpe are Atlas and Gibraltar, the 
latter being one of the two jaws of the Straits of Hercules; Garnado is Granada. Barclay 
does not mention the Northern lands “hynder Norvegen und Thyle”, Iceland and “Pylappen- 
land”, which Locher had already dropped, except Thule, in translating the German of Brant. 
He adds to Locher’s strong Mediterranean interest an allusion to the “newe fonde londe”, 
line 6969. The coast of Labrador had been visited by the Portuguese in 1501, and in that 
year and in 1502 Henry VII had granted some Bristol and Portuguese merchants the right 
to make a voyage of discovery. In 1502 he paid twenty pounds to “the merchants of Bristoll 
that haue bene in the Newefounde Launde”, and in 1503, 1505, he rewarded men who brought 
him hawks, wildcats, and popinjays from “the Newfounded Island”. Hakluyt also speaks of 
three wild men who were captured “in the Newfound Island” and brought to court. Hick- 
scorner mentions the “newfound island” in its list of places visited; and in Letters and Papers 
of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer iii:366, there are mentioned in the inventory of Lord Darcy’s 
goods, 1520, nine pieces of hangings “having the story of the new funnd island”. See Pollard’s 
Reign of Henry VII, ii1:345-47. 

6973. the see of Hercules. Probably that part of the Mediterranean adjacent to the 
Straits of Hercules? 

6985, 6995, 6997. Strabo, plinius, Tholomeus. The Geographia of Strabo, written under 
Augustus, the Historia Naturalis of Pliny the Elder, born just as Strabo died, and the 
“Instructions for the Drawing of Maps” written by Ptolemy in the second century, are the 
three great geographical reference-books of the Middle Ages. The churchman Barclay is by 
no means anticipating the anti-Ptolemiac theory of the solar system; but his criticism of these 
mighty authorities is noteworthy. Compare, in the second book of the Court of Sapience, 
the “processus” of Geometry, where the various theories of the earth’s measurement, by Aris- 
totle, Albertus, and a follower of Ptolemy, are given, and it is said “thus one clerk doth 
another confound”. 

7005. “It is a mad thing for any one to take trouble”, etc. 

7007-15. Allusion is here made to recent discoveries:—that of Newfoundland in 1501, 
the return of Vasco da Gama in 1503 from around the Cape of Good Hope to India, the 
earlier success of Columbus. Ferdinandus is Ferdinand V of Castile and II of Aragon, “the 
Catholic”, husband of Isabella (who died 1504), and patron of Columbus. 

8444 ff. Cp. the description of the Golden Age and the simplicity of manners then, in Vir- 
gil’s Georgics i:125 ff., Ovid’s Metamorphoses i:89 ff. and xv:96 ff., Hesiod as cited by 
Diodorus Siculus v, chap. 4, Boethius’ De Consolatione ii metre 5, Chaucer’s translation The 
Former Age, Lydgate’s FaPrinces vii:1153 ff., Spenser’s Faerie Queene ii, 7:16, Browne’s 
Britannia’s Pastorals ii, song 3, Thomson’s Spring 235 ff., Beattie’s Minstrel ii, stanza 38. 

8465. On usury see note Dance Macabre 393. 

8480. here out busshynge. See 541 and note. In Barclay’s Eclogue ii it is said that 
women most love those “well decked with large busshes set”. 

8503. one grange, etc. Neither to Barclay’s mind nor to that of most Englishmen did it 
appear unfitting that an English cleric should hold more than one benefice; and “plurality” 


PAGE 310] THE SEE OF FOOLS 503 


was not removed from the Church for centuries. But that a churl should own more than one 
bomestead or farm was scandalously greedy. 

8509. churlys becomyth statis. This may be a general conclusion from the preceding, 
and it may perhaps hint at Wolsey, to whom Barclay is supposed to have been antagonistic. 
Wolsey, the son of a well-to-do butcher or grazier, had received an University education, had 
been introduced to the notice of Henry VII, and had “‘of late” been made the King’s chaplain, 
in 1507, the year before Barclay began his translation. Henry made him dean of Lincoln 
in early 1509, and Henry VIII on his accession in April of that year made Wolsey his 
almoner. In that capacity Wolsey was particularly distasteful to the old nobility. In the first 
of Barclay’s eclogues is an allusion to “butchers dogges wood” (i.e. mad), which has been 
interpreted as meaning Wolsey; and documents printed by Brewer, Letters and Papers of 
Henry VIII, indicate that Barclay had incurred the suspicion of the Cardinal. See Schultz 
as ante, p. 298. 

8515. abhomynable. For the spelling see note on Walton E 93 here. 


13796-8. “A place .. . most meet for him.” 

3827. reason... thyn. Cp. Merch Tale 438, ‘‘my wit is thinne”. ProlCantTales 748 has 
“my wit is short’. 

13836-9. Note Barclay’s comment on printers. 

13869. For a censure of Virgil see Macrobius’ Saturnalia as cited by Skelton in the Gar- 
land of Laurell 380-84 note. 

13874-8. Barclay ends with blame of vicious literature; cp. the remarks of Nevill and 
Copland at the opening of the Castell of Pleasure, p. 289 here. The names here singled 
out are Robin Hood and Philip Sparrow; and also in Eclogue iv:721 Barclay casts slur on 
Robin Hood. Ward, Catal. of Romances i:507, opined that Skelton, to whom Barclay had 
a strong antipathy, was probably author of a Robin Hood interlude or pageant; Brie, Engl 
Stud. 37 :32-7, supports this. 

In Roy’s Rede Me and Be Not Wroth, ed. Arber, p. 64, it is said that the “frantyke foly” 
of the bishops forbids the use of the New Testament in English, “but as for tales of Robyn 
hode / With wother iestes nether honest or goode / They have none impediment’. See 
Morley’s language in his prose dedication, p. 386 here. 

sparcles, scattered particles, whether of fire or not. The word, as verb or as substantive, 
is frequent in this period, from Caxton on. In Barclay’s fifth eclogue we find “sprinkled and 
sparkled abrode”; Surrey in his Aeneis is fond of the term, which Wyatt also uses; in Sack- 
ville’s Induction 464 he speaks of “spercled tresse”’, meaning scattered or dishevelled locks. 


BARCLAY’S ECLOGUES: THE PROLOGUE AND THE FOURTH ECLOGUE 


The text of this prologue shows the peculiar and apparently unreasonable notions of a 
sixteenth-century printer as to punctuation. The old cesural bar of the scribes, which had itself 
become a carelessly-handled convention before it passed away, is quite regularly replaced by 
a mid-line comma; and in a large number of cases the second line of a couplet closes with a 
full stop, the first with a colon, regardless of the flow of the sense. It is these frequent 
arbitrarinesses of method, alongside the better-judged handling of a few texts, e.g., in the 
Chaucer of 1561, which make the early history of English punctuation a psychological prob- 
lem. The meddling of John Stow with Chaucerian rhythm, although it proves that he failed 
to hear -e final, proves also that he actually read the text; the more reasonable punctuation 
in his 1561 Chaucer may be due to the same cause, although the question has not yet been 
investigated. But the pointing here is quite mechanical and stupid; the reader should cancel 
it mentally in order to get the flow of Barclay’s meaning. 

Barclay’s prologue bears but small relation to the dedicatory prose preface of Mantuan. 
‘It begins with Barclay’s own survey of previous eclogue-writing. He names Theocritus, 
Virgil, and Mantuan, giving the palm to Mantuan in “that sorte’. Petrarch follows, and 
then, unnamed, Theodulus, author of an “Ecloga” written in the seventh or eighth century, 
a dialogue between the shepherd Pseustis and the shepherdess Alithia, representing Falsehood 


504 NOTES [PAGE 314 


and Truth, and discussing heathendom and Christianity with many examples from history or 
myth in support of the argument. Barclay then says that a youthful work is here revised 
and completed by him; he generalizes for a number of lines on this point, where Mantuan 
says briefly that he found a work of his youth which he had supposed destroyed, that he has 
polished it, and has added two more eclogues done later. The close agreement of line 73 with 
Mantuan’s “intellexi apud quendam litterarium virum esse quendam libellum meum” causes 
us to doubt whether the experience here described is actually Barclay’s or is imitated from 
Mantuan. The remainder of the prologue seems to be Barclay’s own. 


THE PROLOGUE 


3. “They say boldly, they indite”, etc. 

14. a que, a half-farthing or quadrans, often abbreviated to q in accounts. The same 
phrase occurs in Barclay’s Mirror of Good Manners; and see Skelton’s Magnificence 36. 

21. Eglogues. This word, first cited NED as of 1514, is used by Lydgate in Fall of 
Princes iii:110. 

30. style Heroicall. See note on style, Nevill envoy 12. 

31. in our dayes. Mantuan died in 1516. 

32. Hathe. See note on Cavendish 1261. 

37-42. the father, etc. See above. 

51. slouthe to eschewe. See note on Hawes 1313, Cavendish 24-30. 

78. great instance, urgent request. 

85 ff. Horace in the Ars Poetica 114 ff. says, in Conington’s translation :—‘“Gods should 
not talk like heroes, nor again Impetuous youth like grave and reverend men; Lady and nurse 
a different language crave, Sons of the soil and rovers o’er the wave.” 

98. by that manner, because of this mode of presenting my material. 

100. Closed in shadow. Barclay means the same thing that Lydgate or Hawes means by 
“the veil of the fable’. See notes Churl and Bird 29-30, Hawes’ dedic. 34-42, etc. 

104. Poete Laureate. See note on Churl and Bird 15, Burgh 21, 

107. blacke ... greene. See note on Thebes prol. 73. 

116-17. See note on Walton A 44. 

127. There are not ten eclogues by Barclay preserved, but five. Mantuan had ten, Virgil 
ten, Petrarch twelve. 

131. Courtly Misery, The title of the poems by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, which 
Barclay follows in the first three eclogues, is Miseriae Curialium. 


THE FOURTH ECLOGUE 


Compare Spenser, Shepherd’s Calendar, October. The names of the interlocutors here 
are, according to Mantuan, eclogue 5, Silvanus and Candidus, Silvanus being the rich and 
stingy sheepowner. Barclay substitutes Codrus and Minalcas. The latter is Virgilian, from 
the fifth eclogue; and in that same poem line 11 are mentioned the turgia Codri or quarrels 
of Codrus, while in viii:26 Codrus is represented as envious. See the Carmina Burana II 
close,—“quia Codro codrior omnibus abundas”; is this a Virgilian allusion? 

1-36. Barclay’s stage-setting has no parallel in Mantuan. 

16. wide open, i.e., on the back, relaxed. See Sir Degrevaunt 3352, Morte Arthure 2147, 
Beryn prol. 1293. 

18. “Peered to see how his garments became him.” 

63. See Churl and Bird 87-8. 

71 ff. This “example” is not in Mantuan. 

137. Perhaps read “wel ere”, i.e., “just now you conceded”. 

145. Read “Ye other shepherds’; Mantuan has “Vos quibus est res ampla domi”, etc. 

145-151 is quite closely from Mantuan. 

162. Renouncing cures. Mantuan has :—‘“positis vitam traducere curis”. 

167-178. The description of a shepherd’s duties fills two lines of Latin. 

170. daube, lay on as whitewash. In Eclogue v one of the shepherd’s labors, repairing the 
holes in his sheepcote, is to ‘‘stop them with stubble, eft daube them with some clay”. 


ECLOGUE IV 505 


PAGE 319] 


180. Mantuan 18-19 has:—‘“laudabile carmen. Omnem operam totumque caput... 
requirit.” 

185. “I can hardly support the burden of attending to one.” 

190. “Every one disdains to perform my tasks.” 

194. “—then my work is ruined”. 

195-200 are inserted by Barclay to break the long speech; see 459-62. Note the rime 
199-200. Cornix is the principal speaker in Mantuan’s sixth eclogue, used by Barclay for his 
fifth; he says nothing of this sort, however, and the sentiment is not in keeping with Codrus’ 
later stinginess. If Barclay had any plan of making the niggard expansive until he had 
obtained his end, the management is interesting. 

212. For this light and colloquial touch, and for lines 210-15, the Latin has only :—“tibi 
paenula, dicunt, . . . trita, genu nudum, riget hispida barba”. 

216. of leaues bare. Mantuan has “iam silvae implumes”. 

228-9. With the repetition of weary cp. Mantuan’s repetition of paenitet thrice in two 
lines. 

233 represents ut nosti in the Latin. 

236. “At that time men give no thought to age.” 

247. Mantuan line 36 reads :—“formica, brevis sed provida bestia.” 

257. Barclay cannot pass unchallenged the acceptance of stellar influence on human fate 
in the Latin. Cp. his chapter against “astronomy” in the Ship of Fools, Jamieson ii:18. In 
the preface to his translation of Mancini we find:—“Helped by milde Planet and constellation. 
If Planets haue power or may helpe any thing.’ The Latin there is:—‘Sydera coniuncta, 
sydera si qua valent.” Mantuan himself, ecl. vii:181-2, makes Cornix say that “qui numerant 
stellas et se comprendere fata posse putant, stulti’. 

273-294. These four speeches are in Mantuan of two lines each. 

286. reason and ballade consonant, sense and sound agreeing. Cp. such a title as Brown- 
ing’s Bells and Pomegranates. 

295-346. This speech is of eleven lines in Mantuan. 

296. fro presence, i.e., although thou art far from the Muses’ presence, through us may 
come enjoyment of them. 

301-2. Mantuan says, “Carmina sunt auris convivia, caseus oris”. Note his word-play 
auris: oris, and cp. John of Salisbury’s scitu: situ, urbis: orbis, militia: malitia; Fulgentius’ 
famae: fami; Alanus’ nomen: numen, etc. 

315-18 are added by Barclay; see the FaPrinces viii :2685 ff. and note on Churl 260. 

317. lymster, Leominster, in the west of England, near the Welsh border. 

327. See Chaucer’s adaptation from Claudian in PoFoules 99-105, and see note on Churl 
351. 

346. knot of Hercules, one of the attributes of Mercury; the twist of the serpents on 
his staff or caduceus. The allusion is to Hercules’ strangling of two serpents while he was 
yet an infant; the phrase is explained by Macrobius in his Saturnalia i chap. 19 thus :—“Hi 
dracones parte media voluminis sui invicem nodo, quem vocant Herculis, obligantur” 
(Mustard). 

347-8. Mantuan’s shepherd says: “Vana supervacuis inculcas plurima verbis.” The reply 
begins: “Vana inquis—” etc. 

355. boye, a serving-knave; Prompt. Parv. scurrus. The meaning is that the attempt 
to labor hard, like a servant, is impossible if one is to “haunt the Muses’. 

385. Auoyde all charges, remove all responsibilities. 

388. “Then shalt thou see and test what I am able to do”. 

399. Barclay expands somewhat Mantuan’s sketch of a winter evening’s amusements 
around the hearth; his eight lines represent five Latin. The prophitroles of 405 I cannot 
explain; the look of the word tempts one to suggest a game such as Ragman Roll, in which 
various written “fortunes”, rolled together, were drawn out in turn by the players and read 
aloud. But such an amusement seems too “literary” for the group here described. See note 
on GarlLaurell 1455. With the description cp. Thomson’s Winter 617-29, Milton’s L’Allegro 
100-15. 


506 NOTES [PAGE 323 


411. Titerus, Tityrus, i.e., Virgil. 

414, 415. Cp. use of sound with that in 633, and see note ibid. 
416. Mantuan 88 says: ‘et magno pulsabat cantu”. 

419-28. The parallel lines in Mantuan are :— 


eloquium fortuna dabat. Nos, debile vulgus, 
pannosos, macie affectos, farragine pastos, 
Aoniae fugiunt Musae, contemnit Apollo. 

423. frowise, froyse? See note on Thebes 101.—quacham is not in NED or Eng. Dialect 
Dict. 

425. rusty meates, foul food.—inblindeth. See use of blind in lines 1042, 1093, as “to 
make decrepit, dull”. 

431. Render with strong pause after succoure. 

438. man God auowe, man may declare to God. See 726 below. The modern locution is 
“T’ll tell the world”. Cp. and God toforn, Troilus iii:1639, etc. 

441. Cosmus or Capell. The wealth of Cosmo de’ Medici of Florence was proverbial. 
Capell was the name of a great Austrian family, owners of vast landed estates in the four- 
teenth century. Their male line became extinct in 1408, and their possessions passed by mar- 
riage to the house of Lichtenstein. 

444-6. Mantuan has only :—“Serica pallia, Tyrias chlamydes.” The Acts of Apparel of 
Henry VIII and his predecessors specify these same costly stuffs named by Barclay as to be 
worn only by nobles. 

447-8. Mantuan 98 has:—‘non patinam Aesopi fames clipeumve Minervae.” Mustard 
notes that this is Clodius Aesop, a Roman tragic actor of Cicero’s time, of great wealth, who 
according to Pliny, Nat. Hist. x:141, served at a banquet a patina or pie of rare singing birds. 
This extravagance became proverbial. It was the son of this Aesop who is said to have dis- 
solved and drunk a pearl. The shield of Minerva was also a large and costly pie, made of 
peacocks’ brains, flamingoes’ tongues, etc., and so called from its size. 

To these classical examples Barclay adds “Peter’s costly cope’. Both here and in line 
1141, where the miserly Codrus swears by “holy Peter’s cope”, the phrase may mean “a 
treasure”. The NED under cope cites from Barclay’s contemporary Whitinton, who in his 
Vulgaria quaedam cum suis vernaculis, printed in 1527, has “wolde spend Goddes cope 
(Tantaleas opes)”. The NED suggests connection of the gold-idea with the stars, and the 
cope as heaven. See Beryn 453, where “siker as of goddis cope” apparently means “not 
sure at all”. 

451. Mantuan 101 has: “haec me iam pridem memini didicisse sub Umbro.” The teacher 
from whom Mantuan makes his poet-shepherd derive his learning is Umber, Mantuan’s name 
in his eclogues for his own master Gregorio Tifernate. Barclay makes a similar allusion 
to the Dean of St. Paul’s, Colet. 

459-62. This interruption by Codrus, not in Mantuan, is probably introduced by Barclay 
to make the dialogue brisk. Cp. 195-200, 609-28. Barclay adds 463-78. 

479-80. olde Pithagoras. The Greek teacher Pythagoras, of the sixth century B.c., was 
a proverb for his doctrines of moral abstinence, extended by later popular belief to physical 
abstinence. The Pythagorae mensae of Mantuan 104 are dinners of herbs, with no meat. 

490. Mantuan in ecl. ii1:46-7 says, ‘“finem philomena canendi fecerat” in the heat of sum- 
mer. See also his ecl. v:108-9, the source of this passage. 

496. forked cappes were worn by bishops. Mantuan 112 says “‘pontifices”. Read the line: . 
“Or else if thou hast been with the forked caps.” 

507-8. Mantuan 115 has: “vesci Et lupus omni animal crudis existimat escis.” 

519. I haue heard tell. Mantuan says:—‘“Romana palatia vidi.” 

521. Micene and Morton. John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of 
the realm 1486, Cardinal 1493, previously Bishop of Ely, had died in 1500. Micene is perhaps 
Richard Mesyn or Misyn, Bishop of Dromore, who had died about 1462. He was the trans- 
lator of Hampole into English, and as a Carmelite may have been conspicuous in Barclay’s 
memory. 


PAGE 325] ECLOGUE IV 507 


523-4. Mantuan 121 reads:—“Occidit Augustus numquam rediturus ab Orco.” 

525 ff. With Mantuan’s censure of Rome’s greed and Barclay’s adoption of it unex- 
panded cp. Wyatt’s expansion and emphasis on Alamanni’s censure in his first satire, to Poyntz. 

543-556. Three lines in Mantuan. 

557-8. The couplet of the English is a single line in the Latin. 

567-8. Mantuan has: “Consilii locuples ego, sed pauperrimus auri.” 

578. a sawe, etc. Mantuan 141 has: “‘ut dentata acies veterique simillima serrae.” 

584. at the length, at length, finally. Cp. at the large, 81. 

590-91. Mantuan 147 has: “ut frondes Aquilo, mare Libs, vineta pruinae.” 

596. concend. This is the only citation NED, which interprets “kindle, inflame”. Why 
not “concede, agree to”? This spelling for consent is not impossible. 

602. “Which do not become a man of position.” 

605. deedes infame. Mantuan has “infamibus actis’. 

606. ouerlonge here. This is a very frequent device of narrators. See, e.g., the tales of 
Knight and Squire, Lydgate’s Thebes. 

609-28 is inserted by Barclay to break the longest speech of the Latin. Cp. 459-62. 

633. Mantuan 155 has “graves Musae.” Barclay’s use of sound as a transitive verb gov- 
erning an abstract noun is not common in Mid Eng; but cp. Prol CT 275, ‘“Souning always 
the encres of his winning”. 

634. “While these were in power.” 

639. Mantuan 159 has: “occidit ingenium vatum, ruit alta poesis.” 

643-652. Four lines in Mantuan. 

654. hye stile. See notes here on Nevill’s envoy line 12, and FaPrinces G 46. 

659. Mantuan 165 has: “curis flagrantibus ardet.” 

686 ff. Thais, an Athenian courtesan, accompanied Alexander the Great to the East. 
Virgil in eclogue x mentions Lycoris as a Roman courtesan, and Barclay ecl. ii alludes to her. 
Testalis, “Thestylis”, is referred to by Barclay in ecl. ii and by Skelton in his Garland 675; 
the name is taken either from Virgil’s second eclogue or from Mantuan iv:176. The passage 
from Barclay’s ecl. ii is: “Yet is it pleasour to handle and to toye With Galatea, Licoris, or 
Phillis, Neera, Malkin or lustie Testalis.” Compare, without comparison, Milton’s Lycidas 
68-9. 

688. camous did promote. Here I can only conjecture. The meaning of camous is a 
flat nose; see Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale 14, 54, and Lydgate’s Secrees 2623. If it be used here 
to mean “a flat-nosed (i.e., sensual and boorish) person”, then Barclay says that Thais and 
Bacchus take their opportunity to push such a disciple (Skelton?) when true poetry is no 
longer practised. One might interpret that Thais tipped up her nose while drinking, as Milton’s 
Death “upturned his nostril wide” (Par. Lost x:279-80), but there would be no apparent 
connection with what Barclay is saying in the rest of the passage. See Skelton’s Elynour 
Rummyng 28. 

689. drames. This is the earliest NED citation for the use of drama in its modern sense. 
But does it not mean “writers of plays”? 

695. artes triuiall. The three arts of the Trivium, or fundamental University course in 
Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. 

702. fruitlesse of sentence, empty of wisdom. This passage, 699 ff., is parallel to Man- 
tuan’s line 179,—“‘insulsi, illepidi, indociles, improvidi, inepti”. 

707. Mantuan has: “qui solet his vacuas praebere ambagibus aures.” 

708. “They count all others as devoid of judgment.” 

719-1140 are inserted by Barclay into the plan of the Latin eclogue. 

721. The illiterate Codrus praises songs of Robin Hood; see note on line 13874 of the 
Ship of Fools here. 

722. Bentleys ale. In ecl. ii one of the shepherds says “This ale brewed Bentley, it 
maketh me to winke.”—chaseth. See Barclay’s transl. of Mancini,—“though labour hath sore 
chased thy bloud”. We might expect chafeth? 

723-4. These are apparently women of the town, vulgar versions of Lycoris and Thestylis. 


508 NOTES [PAGE 328 


726. “Knowledge is a bore, I declare to God.” See 438 and note. In Roy’s Rede Me and 
Be Nott Wroth, ed. Arber, p. 62, one speaker says that he has explained a point and the other 
replies, “that thou hast, I make god a vowe”. Cp. the use of “God to recorde”, etc. in Skel- 
ton’s Why Come Ye 483, in Godly Queen Hester 599, etc. 

729-30. This couplet apparently refers to a rival of the poet. Minalcas, who has refused 
to sing of the vulgar subjects suggested by Codrus, refuses also to attack the envious of 
“diffamed name”. Can this mean Skelton? does “Place most abused” refer to Skelton’s rank 
of laureate? 

736. Malgre for malice. In his fifth eclogue Barclay uses malgre (or maugre) as a 
substantive :—“I thought no mauger, I tolde it for a bourd.” The NED exemplifies the word 
as a substantive, meaning ‘‘ill will’, from 1320 to 1542. This passage means “To render ill 
will for malice, I refuse such payment”. 

755-56. The poet will call on no Muses to aid him; see note on Walton A 44. 

759-60. In 746 Barclay announces that his ballad is to be based on “noble Salomon”, in 
758 that it is extract of Sapience,—perhaps the apocryphal book of, Wisdom, which bears. 
Solomon’s name. No line of the four stanzas is exactly copied from a verse of Wisdom, but 
many of its principles are restated. Thus with 763-4 cp. Wisdom viii:10, 11, 19, xi:4, 28, 
xvi:16, xxili:5; with 766 cp. Wisdom xxviii:11; with 775 cp. Wisdom i:4; with 783 cp. 
Wisdom xxi:23; with 784 cp. Wisdom xiv:29 and xxix:20; with 788' cp. Wisdom xxiii:5. 
There is but a general parallel between these stanzas and the De Quatuor Virtutibus translated 
from Mancini by Barclay. 

791. Compare, so far as narrative management is concerned, the Host’s interruption to 
the Rime of Sir Thopas. Most of Codrus’ objection, however, is of the “Shoemaker, stick 
to your last!” type. 

794. boxe of tarre. The constant companion of the shpeherd, used to heal scabs or wounds 
on the sheep. In the Assembly of Gods Pan has “a gret tar box hangyng by his side”; in 
As You Like It, act iii, the shepherd’s hands smell of tar. Drayton in his fourth eclogue 
says of his shepherd that “His tarbox on his broad belt hung”. See note on Piers Plowman 
(C) x :262-3. 

798. Cornix is the name which Barclay often gives himself in these poems. See 1136. 

811-20. As in 459-62, Barclay breaks up a long speech by a short one. 

823 ff. The relation of this inserted elegy to Jean Lemaire de Belges‘ Temple dHonneur 
et de Vertus is briefly discussed in the introd. above. We may note that except between lines 
878 and 879, 894 and 895, each stanza of Barclay picks up the rime of that preceding. For 
the subject of the elegy, Sir Edward Howard, see note on 853 below. 

850. enhaunsed, etc., “elevated as is due a conqueror’. The Scots had just been defeated, 
and their king slain, at Flodden Field. The English army was commanded by Thomas How- 
ard, earl of Surrey, made Duke of Norfolk immediately after. See Cavendish 1121. 

853. Moste noble Hawarde, etc. This is Thomas Howard, second duke of Norfolk, died 
1524. Although attainted and imprisoned for his support of Richard III, Howard was sub- 
sequently restored to his honors by Henry VII, and under Henry VIII was an influential 
member of Council and an able military commander. He won the battle of Flodden Field in 
1513, when seventy years old; and so highly did Henry value his judgment that he was made 
guardian of the realm during the king’s absence at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The duke 
had by his two wives eleven sons and seven daughters; see Barclay’s line 852. 

His second son, Sir Edward Howard, was a gallant sea-fighter. After two daring raids 
on the French coast in 1512, he was made Lord High Admiral; and the next year he was 
killed in a third expedition. His death was felt as a national disaster. His wife was by an 
earlier marriage to Sir William Parker the mother of Henry Lord Morley, whose verse-work 
is discussed in this volume. 

It was the wife of Sir Edward’s elder brother, the third duke, who patronized Skelton, 
and for whom he wrote, at Sheriff Hutton, the Garland of Laurell. See the appendix to vol. 
i of Nott’s Wyatt and Surrey, passim. 

855. Talbot. George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, died 1541, bore the sword at the 
coronation of both Henry VII and Henry VIII, was an executor of Henry VII’s will, a joint 


PAGE 330] ECLOGUE IV 509 


ambassador to the Pope in 1511, Lieutenant-General of the King’s army in Picardy in 1513, 
etc. One of the most powerful of English nobles, of whom Wolsey wrote to the king :—“as 
active a capitaine as can be chosen within your realm”. 

859. Corson. This is probably Sir Robert Curzon or Corson, also termed Baron Curson, 
who in 1513 was Henry VIII’s master of ordnance; see various mentions of him in Brewer’s 
Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. i. He is called “master of the rearward” in entry 
no. 4354 ibid., and in entry no. 1757 is said to be ‘‘of Ipswich”. 

867. For note on the double superlative see Walton’s Boethius B 28 here. 

871 ff. Critics have praised this portrait of Labor, which I have not traced to any earlier 
source. The word of course means Effort. The opposing guardian of an entrance, in 
medieval romance and allegory, is usually a monster, from Cerberus to Milton’s Sin and 
Death. Barclay’s business here was to depict a figure definitely human, at once terrible and 
admirable; and he staggers somewhat under difficulties. He begins a list of “labors” with the 
dragon slain by Cadmus, the Chimaera overcome by Bellerophon, and the conquest of the 
Golden Fleece by Jason. His imagination is then apparently attracted to the labors of Her- 
cules, and in 885 he mentions the oxen (of Geryon), the boar (of Erymanthus), the lion 
(of Nemaea). This variety of animal form sends his mind to Proteus and the changes 
assumed when Proteus attempted escape from the grasp of Aristeus,—see the fourth Georgic 
of Virgil; and for other accounts of the forms taken by the sea-god see the fourth book of 
the Odyssey or Ovid’s Metamorphoses viii :732-4. 

876-8 repeats the rime-word; in 878-9 the stanza-liaison by rime is broken, as in 894-5. 

879-80. The management of these two lines, with the different placing of the word Here, 
recalls Inferno iii:14-15. This is not, however, saying that Barclay knew Dante’s poem. 

883. “He cannot of himself get anything.” 

895. Alway he drinketh, etc. It is the characteristic of “idropesie” in medieval thought 
that his thirst “crescit indulgens”, as in Horace, Odes ii, 2:13, Gower’s Confessio v:253-4, 
Lydgate’s FaPrinces vii:998. This last reads: “The mor he drank the mor he was athrust”. 
Barclay uses the touch here to make the giant’s laborious sweat a realistic portrait. 

901. “The sight of him instructs the rude.” 

905. doth expres. On the -th plural see notes Walton A 105 and Cavendish 1261. On 
express see note FaPrinces A 303 here. 

912. monster Minerua, etc. Here I can only conjecture. Hercules was ultimately over- 
come by his labors, says Barclay, although at the opening of life he had chosen the path of 
Virtus rather than that of Pleasure. This story of the “Choice of Hercules” Barclay had 
translated when doing the Ship of Fools; see Jamieson ii1:287, 302. On such a suggestion, 
the “sonne of Venus”, line 918, would be a covering phrase for Pleasure; we may recollect 
that the daughter of Cupid was named Voluptas. But why Minerva or Pallas should be 
identified with this monster Labor is unclear, unless the similarity of their high inflexible 
purpose be dwelt on to the exclusion of all else. 

916. ouerccome and superate. The spelling is as in the text. Such word-pairs, English 
and Latin often, are not uncommon in Barclay, and are frequent in Lydgate and in Early 
English generally. See line 921 here; see “more ewrouse or happy” in Eclogue v and in the 
preface to the translation of Mancini, also, e.g., in Lydgate’s FaPrinces iv :3831. 

929. “But because the entrance offers difficulty to them.” In Chaucer’s Troilus iv :922 
pretend means tend; in Douglas’ Aeneis and in Barclay’s fifth eclogue it means portend. 

969. “Yet his spirit (courage) thought itself of more worth” than inherited glory. 

983 ff. With this reproach to Death compare the FaPrinces iii:3655 ff., Troy Bool 
i11:5475 ff., Skelton’s elegy on the earl of Northumberland, on the duke of Bedford (?), etc. 
Barclay is free from Lydgate’s allusions to the Parcae, but “cries out on Fortune” quite 
according to medieval code. Love-laments of the period are more the direct address to Death, 
like Barclay’s here; see Orléans’ poem xv here and notes ibid. 

994. “This act (of injustice) we might impute” etc. Read the passage with a comma 
after suffred and none after mone, in line 993. The first case NED of impute in the sense 
of accuse is of 1596. 

998. “This will and liberty to torment mankind”? 


510 NOTES [PAGE 333 


1022. This line is aimed at the niggard Codrus. 

1042. See 1093 for similar use of blind as “deprived of”. 

1043. See line 99 of FaPrinces extract B here. 

1044. The meaning is,—shall I blame God for his death, or Fortune? Cp. FaPrinces 
1:2195, ii:3717, 3748, 4284, etc. for mention of God and Fortune as co-deities; denied however, 
ibid. i:4977-78. 

1074. Read with a comma after turned. 

1075-78. With this “exculpation” of Fortune cp. Boethius’ De Consolatione ii prose 1, 
Machaut’s Roy de Behaingne 725-34, Chaucer’s Troilus i :848-49. 

1083 ff. A list of unfortunate great now follows:—Pompey, Caesar, Cato, Seneca, Cicero, 
Polycrates, Alexander, Pyrrhus, Valerian, Priam, Paris, Hector, Cyrus. 

1093. “Fortune hath tried, sorely dimming their dignity”. 

1097. death dishonest. Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, was hanged as “to alle folk odious”, 
see FaPrinces iv :1094. 

1103. Pirrus. Pyrrhus king of Epirus, while invading Argos B. c. 273, was killed by a tile 
flung from a housetop by a woman. Lydgate, FaPrinces iv :3880, has a different story. 

1112. Thomyris. This savage queen of the Massagetae, who defeated Cyrus and plunged 
his head in a bath of blood, exercised a strong fascination on the early Renaissance. Lydgate 
deals with her FaPrinces ii:3844 ff., giving her no praise; but see note on Skelton’s Garland 
827 ff. here. 

1115 ff. The close of the elegy, with its dignified exhortation to the bereaved father to 
recall the “dulce et decorum” of his son’s death, is like the close of Lemaire de Belges’ 
Temple d’Honneur. Note lines 1124, 1127-8. 

1142. Here Mantuan begins again. The nine lines of the Latin ending are closely followed 
by Barclay. In 1141 the “holy Peters cope” of the English represents ‘‘per Superos, per 
Olympica numina’. See note on 447-8 above; see TemGlass 117. 


SKELTON: THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 


1 ff. The astronomical opening; see note on Thebes 1 here. Mars is retrograde, going 
down the sky; Scorpio is 18 degrees high; the moon is full. 

16. encrampisshed, etc. “My imagination was so straitly bound.” See Chaucer’s Anel- 
ida 171, Lydgate’s FaPrinces i1:3623, Flower of Courtesy 49, for this word. 

17. With this leaning of the poet against a stump cp. Drayton’s picture of his shepherd 
Rowland “leaning on a rampike tree”, (i.e. one dead at the top), eclogue i, stanza four. 
Drayton’s preface compares Barclay and ?Skelton, whom he calls Scoggin. 

22. forest of Galtres. This great forest extended all around Sheriff Hutton, the seat of 
the Duke of Norfolk in Yorkshire, where Skelton was at this time the guest of the duke’s 
daughter-in-law, the countess of Surrey. The forest was in part swampy, says Dyce, citing 
Camden’s Britannia; see line 23 below. 

27. faire fall, etc., “Success to that forester that can so bate his hound”. The exact 
force of bate here is uncertain; it usually means to check, restrain. 

34. fatall persuasioun, “prophetic assurance’. See note on Hawes 665. Skelton fore- 
sees what is to happen to him. 

36. as I me auisid, as I took note. At the opening of the Inferno Dante says mi ritrovai, 
“T came to myself”. He too has slept, as Skelton has. 

53. Scyence seven. See note on Hawes line 249. 

71. “If it were not that he has your support.” 

73-4. thensugerd pocioune, etc., the sugared draught of Helicon’s spring. See note on 
sugared, Thebes 52, on Helicon, Burgh’s Letter 7. Cp. Bokenam’s prol. to St. Agnes, “sugird 
welle in Elicona”; cp. “sugar dropis swete of Helicon”, Court of Love 22; see Skelton against 
Garnesche, 98-99. The Roman poet Claudian, in his Laus Serenae, has “mella Heliconis”. 


PAGE 343] THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 511 


77. fyttynge. In line 149 syttynge is similarly used. Either is appropriate, and either 
may be a misprint. 

93-7. In defence of Skelton’s “trew and playne” writing, Pallas adduces the cases of 
Ovid and of Juvenal, banished and threatened with death for similar free censure of the 
powerful. The reason for Ovid’s banishment by Augustus kas never been known; and the 
belief that Juvenal’s visit to Egypt was a sort of exile because of his satiric attack on the 
imperial favorite has no certain basis. 

97. rubbid sum on the gall, touched a sore spot for somebody. The NED cites Chaucer’s 
WifeBath’s Tale 84, and then this passage. See Cavendish 205. 

101 ff. Skelton here sketches an animal-fable, and makes Pallas say that faultfinders 
might try to put an injurious interpretation on what the poet had written for his own pleasure. 
This passage seems to be a defense of something written by Skelton, using animals as poetic 
material, which had brought him under suspicion. 

112. fawte, fault. This word was pronounced without the /-sound down to the nineteenth 
century; note Pope’s rimes sought: fault, Iliad v:15-16, thought: fault, Odyss. xvii: 16-17. 
See Nevill 187-8 here. 

114. make I this motyve, “propound this argument”. The NED cites this passage to 
illustrate the meaning “a motion, proposition’. The word has, I would suggest, much the 
meaning of opposaile below, i.e., of a propounded difficulty or question requiring answer. 
See Hoccleve’s Lerne to Die 564, and see one of the many cases in Capgrave’s St. Katherine, 
iv :1884,—“This is my motyf, an answere I desyre.” Cp. ibid., ii:1236, iv:1572, 1856, etc. 

125-6. With this line-flow, run over and pausing sharply after the first foot of the 
following line, cp. lines 137-8, 143-4, 156-7, 164-5; and note 436-8, 656-7. It is more effective 
in Chaucer’s BoDuchesse 22-23, 78-79, 111-12, 227-8, 1275-76; and in modern work such as 
Shelley’s Hellas, Swinburne’s Tristram of Lyonesse, the device is very conscious and emphatic. 

130 ff. So full is the discussion of the relations between Demosthenes and Aeschines 
which Skelton now makes, that we may conjecture an allusion to himself and some rival poet 
under this disguise. Aeschines, for years the rival of Demosthenes, was at last defeated by 
him in public argument, and left Athens. It perhaps adds a special force to this comparison 
that the question argued was the legality of the golden crown which the State proposed to 
confer upon Demosthenes for his services. 

141-3. “Your query in opposition is well put, and vigorously developed to your advantage; 
it is hard to combat.” The word opposaile is first cited NED from Lydgate, see FaPrinces 
111 :431, v:2268. It occurs both times in rime, and with no such word in the antecedent French. 
It is also used in the earlier form of the envoy to the Libel of English Policy, not in rime. 

151-3. “Whose attack in writing was very effective in urging Demosthenes to set out 
brilliantly his well-wrought argument, from which Aeschines had no escape.” 

162-7. A letter of St. Jerome to Paulinus, prefixed to the translation of the Vulgate by 
Jerome, begins :—“Frater Ambrosius tua mihi munuscula perferens, detulit simul—” etc. In 
the letter Jerome illustrates the greater force of the spoken as compared with the written 
word by an anecdote of Aeschines. “Unde et Aeschines cum Rhodi exularet, et legeretur 
illa Demosthenis oratio, quam adversus eum habuerat, mirantibus cunctis atque laudantibus, 
suspirans ait:—‘Quid si ipsam audissetis bestiam sua verba resonantem!’ ” 

188-9. liddurns or lidderons (cp. Ital. ladrone) means in sixteenth century English 
“rascals, scoundrels”. Used by Skelton in Magnificence line 1919.—losellis, losels or worthless 
fellows, used from Langland down, and revived by Browning and other modern writers.— 
facers are swaggerers, bullies—bracers is not in the NED, but cp. bracery, corruption, cited 
NED from a 1540 text. However, the word is in the rules of the charter of the Company 
of Musicians, incorporated 1640, forbidding “facing, bracing, evil reproaching, or affraying”. 
This seems to connote violent deeds or talk—nowghtty pakkis is used in a de Worde text of 
1531, cited NED, as synonymous with “wretched livers”. In Cotgrave’s Dictionary putaigne, 
“harlot”, is rendered “naughty pack”. 

192. “Riot and Revel are in the list of your household.” 


512 NOTES [PAGE 345 


193. Mayntenans, maintenance, the keeping of an army of retainers paid or protected 
by the lord, was an evil legislated against in England by Richard II, and overcome through 
Henry VII’s militia-system and the transfer of civil cases to the Star Chamber. Its abuse— 
the Earl of Warwick was escorted to Parliament by six hundred men wearing his badge and 
pledged to him—was according to historians a prime cause for the long-drawn out Wars of 
the Roses. See Hoccleve’s RegPrinces 2791 ff. 

196. karlyle to kent, Carlisle to Kent, from North to South of England. 

201. set oute a sunnyng, idle in the sun, like useless or unnecessary things. 

209. Jak Athrommys bibille, Jack o’ Thrums’ Bible. The same phrase occurs in Skelton’s 
Magnificence, line 1427, and Jack a Thrums is mentioned in the third Garnesche poem, line 
204, and in Colin Clout 284. Dyce refers to a burlesque printed in Reliquiae Antiquae i:84, 
in which are mentioned two noted preachers, “Jacke a Throme and Jone Brest Bale; these 
men seyd in the bibull that an ill drynker is unpossibul hevyon for to wynne; for God luffus 
nodur hors nor mare, but mere men that in the cuppe con stare.” Note also that Jack Drum’s 
Entertainment, referred to in the Three Ladies of London, written about 1584, is a thrashing. 
Is “Jack a Thrums’” the type of an illiterate tosspot, and his “Bible” the bottom of a tankard? 

215. The printed eds, read good record. MS omits. 

_217. Note the inversion, and cp. lines 230, 232, 415, 417, 419, 879. 

235. In the third book of Chaucer’s Hous of Fame, Eolus is Fame’s trumpeter. 

236. Bararag. We would say “Tarantara”. See line 245. 

238. at our retenew, at our cost and charge. The phrase today would be “in our retinue”, 
meaning the organization of household dependents. 

239. put hymself in prees. This phrase, meaning to put one’s self forward, compete for, 
take a risk, is used by Chaucer PoFoules 603, Scogan 49, Former Age 33. It is very 
frequent in Lydgate, and appears in Hoccleve, Bokenam, etc. Wyatt has it; but Spenser, 
ShepCal October 70, does not treat it as a reflexive. 

242. The prints have spede you. MS omits. 

243. “Let this trumpeter be produced at once!” 

251. “Have in! Have out!” ie., “Let me in! Get out!” are the cries of the rivals for 
Fame’s favor. 

260. timorous blaste. Timorous may mean terrible; see the NED citations, which do not 
include this passage. Cp. such phrases as Chaucer’s ‘‘slepy yerde”, KnTale 529, Cavendish’s 
“trembling trompe”, Visions 1222, Spenser’s “slombring dew’, Faerie Queene i, 1:36, Sandys’ 
“drowsie rod”, (translating Ovid’s virga movente soporem), Milton’s “oblivious pool”, Par.Lost 
1:266, and his “forgetful lake”, ii:74; cp. Thomson’s “panting height”, Summer 1670. 

267. for the nonys, for the occasion. This phrase early became stereotyped, and part 
of its uses in late Middle English are such, part real. In Chaucer’s Troilus iv:185, 428, it is 
living, probably also in ProlCT 379, but not so in Prologue 545, KnTale 21, 565, etc. With 
Lydgate it is oftener stereotyped than real; see Thebes 311, but Troy Book i:1315. This 
latter line has “‘as it wer for the nonys’, like the Skelton line here, and as in Beryn 544. 
Hawes, Wyatt, etc., use the phrase; in our day it has been revived by Browning at its full 
original value; see Ring and Book x:41, Tiwo Poets 1108-9, and cp. Childe Roland 179. In 
the epil. to Pacchiarotto, Browning uses it to contrast with “for the future”. 

270. a murmur of minstrels. Dyce compares “a noise of musicians” etc., in early plays 
by Lyly, Jonson, ete. This group includes Orpheus the Thracian and Amphion of Arcadia. 

290. Daphne, pursued by Phoebus Apollo, fled him because Eros had stricken her with 
the leaden dart which expels love. See Ovid, Metam. i:471. 

296. O thoughtful herte, etc. As Dyce notes, Lydgate opens his Life of Our Lady with 
this phrase. Skelton also used Lydgate’s entire line in a poem to a lady named Katherine,— 
see Dyce i:25, where it will be seen that the stanza-initials give “Kateryn’. Another phrase 
in the Kateryn-poem also occurs line 315 here. And there is a similarity in the opening line 
of a poem copied by MS Bodl. Fairfax 16,—“O wofull hert prisound in gret duresse.” Mac- 
Cracken, printing this last-named poem in PLMA 26:160, reads the line “—profound in gret 
duresse”’. 


PAGE 347] THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 513 


300. “As he did take the tree”, etc. 

301. This line is from Ovid, Metam. i:554,—‘“sentit adhuc trepidare novo sub cortice 
pectus.” 

302. his. Marshe’s edition reads this. 

304. hard is, etc. “Your star is unrelenting, unfavorable.” 

305. cloyster virginall, physical chastity. 

306. ‘Hardened adamant is the cement of your wall.” 

310-14. These lines from Ovid, Metam. 1:521-4. Marshe reads gresse in 314. 

315. “The fervent accesses, burning fever-attacks, of love.” A similar phrase, “feverous 
axys”, occurs in Skelton’s Kateryn-poem mentioned in note on 296 above; it is in the line 
preceding that modeled on Lydgate. The term access for recurrent ague-fits is used in 
Chaucer’s Troilus ii1:1316, in Lydgate’s Temple of Glas 358 (see Schick’s note), in the Cuckoo 
and Nightingale, etc. 

320. What Ovid makes Apollo say is that if Daphne cannot be his love she shall be his 
tree, that he will always wear the laurel, and that it shall be worn by victorious generals. 

324. See notes on ChurlandBird 15, Burgh 21. Dyce points out that “poetis laureat” 
means those holding degrees in the Trivium of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, and that poet 
was used to signify a writer of either verse or prose, a maker. 

326. declynacyons. Marshe’s edition reads “Declamations”. 

326 ff. Skelton proceeds to display his learning by a list of writers and works from 
Quintilian to Lydgate. Quintilian’s “Declamations” are now considered spurious. Theo- 
critus’ “bucolycall relacyons” are his idyls, in which pastoral setting and story are mingled. 
Hesiod the “economist” or writer on husbandry is named in line 328, misprinted “Eliodus” 
by Faukes; Icononucar, as Dyce notes, is miswritten for Oeconomicus or Economicar (see 
line 353). Homer is in line 329 termed “the ffresshe historiar”, i.e. vigorous narrator. 
Stanza 48 presents Cicero, Sallust’s Catiline and his Jugurthine War, and Ovid. Skelton does 
not say that the Jugurtha has been translated by Barclay; the work appeared in 1520. 

334-6. Read blessed in 334, as in 341, 348, etc.; MS blesses. The stanza-refrain uses 
assonance, droppes: throtis, as printed by Faukes; note Marshe’s different reading, line 342. 

337 ff.. This stanza mentions Lucan, Statius and his Achilleis (only a fragment of which 
exists), Persius, Virgil, and Juvenal. Persius’ problems diffuse may mean the veiled allusions 
of his satires, and it may mean only Skelton’s desire for pr-alliteration. Virgil’s Aeneid, and 
Juvenal who makes men thoughtful, follow. The word satirray is not in the NED, but 
obviously means satirist. 339 has no rime for 341. 

342. The reading flotes instead of droppes is peculiar to the Marshe print, from which 
this stanza is taken to supply a gap in Faukes’ text. The word perhaps means “flowings”; cp. 
flotesse, scum, skimmings. 

344 ff. This stanza mentions Livy and Ennius. To Livy are ascribed “decades”. His 
history of Rome was not so arranged by himself, but the scribes of it, already at the close of 
antiquity, imposed such a grouping on his material. Ennius’ Annales are probably meant by 
line 347, but the work does not exist. 

351 ff. Here are named Aulus Gellius the historian, Horace, Terence, and Plautus. Hor- 
ace is credited with a ‘“‘new poetry’, a possible confusion, as Warton suggests, of the title 
of his Ars Poetica with that of Vinsauf’s Nova Poetria. 

358 ff. Skelton proceeds to Seneca’s tragedies, Boethius’ Consolatio, and Maximian’s 
elegies, which latter are termed “mad ditties”. Of Maximian’s six elegies, the fifth, as Dyce 
remarks, may be described in line 361; in that poem Maximian narrates a love-adventure 
between himself in his later years and a “puella”. 

365 ff. This stanza mentions “John Bochas”, ie. Boccaccio, Quintus Curtius, and Macro- 
bius. By the “volumys grete”’ of Boccaccio are meant his Latin works, the De Casibus 
Virorum Illustrium, De Claris Mulieribus, De Genealogia Deorum. Quintus Curtius was 
the author of De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni. Macrobius’ principal works are the 
Saturnalia, which Skelton does not mention, and a commentary, or “treu probate”, on the 
Somnium Scipionis; this dream was contained in one of the lost books of Cicero’s De Re 
Publica, and is preserved only by Macrobius. 


514 NOTES [PAGE 348 


372-6. Poggio of Florence and the French friar Gaguin are now named. Skelton does 
not allude to Poggio’s Latin translation of (part of) Diodorus Siculus, used by himself for 
his version (see 1463 ff. below) ; what he mentions is the Facetiae, a collection of anecdotes 
and jests very popular in the sixteenth century, but now classed among the incredibly indecent 
productions of the Italian Renaissance. It gave Poggio a great reputation; Gawain Douglas 
names him with Plautus and Persius. Line 376 alludes to the quarrel between Skelton and 
Robert Gaguin, the leader of humanism in Paris, head of the Order of the Maturins, and 
royal ambassador to England in 1490, when he and Skelton may have met. We have no 
knowledge of this “flyting” other than Skelton’s mention, line 1165 below, of his “recule 
against gaguyne”, a work preserved only in fragments (see Brie in Englische Studien 37 :32). 

380-4. Plutarch and Petrarch, Lucilius, Valerius Maximus, Vincentius, Propertius, and 
Pisander are next mentioned. Plutarch’s Lives were translated from Greek into Latin, com- 
plete, by Campano, a pupil of Valla, and printed at Rome in 1470. Petrarch’s Latin works, 
to which alone Skelton is probably alluding, include a Ciceronian treatise De remediis utriusque 
fortunae, many letters on the model of Cicero’s, verse-eclogues, an epic entitled Africa, etc. 
Lucilius, a Roman satirist, is known to us only by fragments of his works. Valerius Maximus 
is the author of Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium Libri, a compilation of anecdotes of 
“human interest” into groups according to the moral they point; the book was very popular 
in the late Middle Ages because of these two qualities. The phrase “by name”, applied to 
Valerius, is not padding here, but a discrimination between him and Valerius Flaccus. See 
note on Thebes line 160. Vincencius in speculo alludes to Vincent of Beauvais, the thirteenth- 
century compiler of a huge four-part encyclopedia entitled the Speculum Majus, and divided 
into Naturale, Morale, Doctrinale, and Historiale. Propertius is the Roman writer of elegies. 
Pisander was the name of two Greek poets; the work of neither survives, but in Macrobius’ 
Saturnalia (see note on 365 above) a carping guest at the banquet accuses Virgil, whose work 
is under discussion, of having stolen nearly all of the second book of the Aeneid from 
Pisander. 

386. “And as I thus soberly looked about among them.” 

387-91. Skelton here links in apparent equality Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate; but in 
Philip Sparrow 783 ff. he is amply shrewd in his judgment of the three elder poets. Other 
writers were less critical; see introd. to Lydgate, page 96, and see Walton’s Boethius A 
33-40 here, King James in the last stanza of the Kingis Quair, the Court of Sapience as 
printed p. 260 here, Hawes line 1261 ff. here and note, Feylde’s prologue to Controversy 
between a Lover and a Jay. 

397. Skelton’s vanity is painfully obvious here, as in 1470. 

402. enplement. The medieval French word emplement means approximately “arrival at 
goal, consummation”. 

405. Brutus Albion. Britain was supposedly founded by Brutus the Trojan, descendant 
of Aeneas, who came from Italy thither, and settled London as “New Troy”. So says 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Welsh historiographer of the twelfth century. See note on Cay- 
endish epitaph 35 here. 

413. This line is used as refrain 427, 441. Note the repetition of 334-6. 

415, 417, 419, are all inverted sentences; the latter half of each line is to be read first. 
See line 217. 

436-7, 437-8. Cp. the run-over of 125-6 and note there. 

442. shewyd ther deuyse, played their part. See FaPrinces v :2404. 

455. A comma is to be understood after was. 

460 ff. Observe the number of formations with the prefix en, a favorite device with 
Skelton. See 648 ff. 

479. clere story. The upper part of a building, especially a church, which is free to light 
and air, and has a series of windows. Skelton’s is the earliest non-ecclesiastical use, says 
NED. See Twelfth Night iv, 2:41. 

485. perlys of garnate. The allusion here may be to Granada, at this time the center of 
the European jewel-trade. See note Churl and Bird 259. Caxton renders “‘von dosoye et de 
garnate” as ‘“wyn of oseye and of Garnade”’. 


PAGE 350] THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 515 


492. purseuantis, etc. Pursuivants, i.e., heralds or newsbringers, with reports from Apulia 
(Poyle), Thrace, Limerick (Ireland), Lorraine (eastern France), etc, 

495. nauern, etc. Navarre, a territory part French part Spanish, lying on both sides of 
the Pyrenees, is often mentioned in literature of this period. See FaPrinces viii:2884, 
ix :2459, 2471, Court of Love 1229, Skelton’s poem Against the Scots 153, Lyndesay’s Dreme 
729-30, the poem Doctor Doubble Ale (89) in Hazlitt’s EarlyPopPoetry iii, etc. Earlier 
uses cp. Laurence Minot, poem iv:70, the romance of Octavian 962, the poem King Berdok, 
etc. On this last the Cambr. Hist. Eng. Lit. ii:315 says “Strathnaver”’. One of the main 
roads from Spanish Navarre north led through Roncesvalles, ‘“rounceuall”, where part of 
Charlemagne’s army suffered defeat in 778, and where a later church was famous. 

497. the mayne lande. Probably the Almayne land, Germany. 

500-502 are proverbs. 

504. fals quarter. Dyce explains this from a seventeenth-century handbook on Armory 
as meaning a soreness on the inside of the hoof. 

512-14. All sorts of men were there, from Dartmouth, Plymouth, Portsmouth; the 
bailiffs and burgesses of the Cinque Ports, i.e., of Dover, Sandwich, Romney, Hastings, 
Hythe. Skelton enumerates the most important commercial coast towns of England, his 
imagination passing from west through south to southeast. 

522. Occupacyon. In the following passage Skelton states, in his own way, that the 
“eschewing of idleness”, his industry in study and in writing, is the source of his fame. See 
notes here on Hawes 1313, Cavendish 24-30. 

533-36. Skelton here suddenly gives a glimpse of lyrical power; the picture of the rising 
lark, springing from this pretentious and feeble allegory, gives us a shock of pleasure, all 
the greater because the line-movement reminds us of a true poet’s: “Like to the lark at 
break of day arising From sullen earth’. Most poets are touched to finer speech by the 
lark; Dante, Chaucer, Lydgate’s lark “with notis newe hegh vp in the ayr”’, Milton’s herald 
lark, come to the memory. William Browne and Beattie hear the song as “shrill’, and pay 
less attention to the morning freshness of it. The nineteenth century is impressed by the 
invisibility of the music, as indeed was Charles Cotton in the seventeenth century. Hood 
speaks of “vanished larks”, Keats of the “skysearching lark”, and the lark “lost” in the sky. 
Mrs, Browning’s lark is “sucked up out of sight In vortices of glory and blue air’, Tennyson’s 
is ‘a sightless song”, Browning’s is ‘“emballed by its own crystal song”. Tennyson in The 
Princess harks back to the epithet “shrill”; Meredith calls the bird “dewdelighted’’,—and see 
his poem The Lark Ascending; to Christina Rossetti the lark is “hopeful”. Galsworthy says 
that the lark “dripped his beads of song’”’; Amy Lowell sees him “shooting up like a popgun- 
ball”; Joseph Auslander hears him “arguing with the sun”, or “talking madness in some 
corner of the sky”. 

541 ff. There seems here an allusion to a turning-point in Skelton’s life, when his “mast 
of worldly trust’ was broken, perhaps by the death or alienation of a powerful patron, and 
when his assiduity in study repaired his fortunes. 

550 ff. a quyte your hyre, reimburse you for your trouble. Skelton’s name is to be 
sounded beyond Tyre, from Sidon to Olympus, from Babel to the Caspian hills. 

561-2. There is here, as in Barclay’s eclogue iv :879-80, a momentary reminder of the 
method of Dante; see Inferno iv:104, vi:113. 

563 whylis ... space. See ProlCantTales 35. 

564-5. Cp, Dante’s request to Virgil, Inferno xi:13-14,—“alcun compenso . . . trova, che 
il tempo non passi perduto”, 

567. Wordes be swordes, etc. A proverb. 

590, 595. The leopard has an upraised paw resting on a scroll bearing the inscription. 
Line 595 is followed by a “cacosyntheton”, or, in Greek, something ill put together. The 
subject is Industry; Skelton’s six Latin lines show borrowings from classical authors, which 
Dyce points out. The second and third lines of the group are modeled on Juvenal’s Satire 
viii :129,— 

Nec per conventus et cuncta per oppida curvis 
Unguibus tre parat nummos raptura Celaeno, 


516 NOTES [PAGE 352 


and the last line echoes Virgil’s eclogue v:16. Dyce says that these lines are beyond his 
comprehension. Skelton seems to say that Industry (?) bears weapons more to be feared 
than are the bolts of Jove; that she is as ready to use her curved talons as is a harpy to 
snatch money. Then, enumerating the disputes of a fierce world, he adds: “Thou wanderest 
a thousand ways to seek for thyself the strife of Mars, that the wild nard may give place to 
the scorned and thorny rose-tree.” Is he alluding to his own industrious use of letters as a 
weapon of attack?—These six lines are not included in our line-numbering, nor are sub- 
sequent Latin passages; the numbering of Dyce’s edition therefore ceases now to agree with 
this. 

604. Dyce cites but dismisses the suggestion that alchemists are here meant. See note on 
607 below. 

606. pope-holy. In the Romaunt of the Rose 415 Chaucer thus translates the French 
papelardie, “hypocrisy”. The word is there possibly an adjective; it is such in Piers Plow- 
man B 13:284, in the Ship of Fools, ed. Jamieson i:154, in Skelton’s Magnificence 467 and 
in his ?Replycacion, ed. Dyce i:209. In the poem printed as by Lydgate, Halliwell, MinPo 
27-46, it is a substantive—golde and hole, “precious and perfect’. 

607. powle hatchettis. The NED, citing Skelton only, says “an opprobrious appellation”, 
Skelton uses it also in a poem printed Dyce i:22-3. As he there employs the phrase “blynkerd 
blowboll”, may it be that the expression “blow at the cole’, above cited 604, is to be read 
“at the bole’? See Colyn Blowbole’s Testament for the use of the word blowbole to mean 
“drunkard”; in Barclay’s first eclogue Godfrey Gormand “blows in a bole’, and in Lydgate’s 
Mumming at Hertford the wife of Hob the Reeve sits “bolling at the nale” all day, and 
“hathe for the collyk pouped in the bolle”. 

613. “That fawn on thee and curs by nature. That—”. 

618. Bowns, etc. In modern parlance, “Bang, bang, bang”. 

623. gunstones. Dyce notes that this term was retained after iron shot had supplanted 
round stones for artillery. 

626. Masid as a marche hare, wild as a hare in March,—the breeding time for hares. 
Earliest case of the locution in NED is 1529. 

628. Skelton here fetches a slap at one of his opponents, whom he describes as a 
“tumbler” or mountebank, who later became a “dysour” or sneering jester, and then a gentle- 
man. He is, adds Skelton, a second Piers the prater, who begins quarrels. The “Piers the 
prater” carries a modern student’s thought to Piers Plowman and its attack on social abuses, 
but there is no certainty as to Skelton’s meaning here. 

629. a deuyl way. Cp. Chaucer’s MillProl. 26 etc., and the phrase “a twenty devil way” 
in MillTale 527 etc. The exclamation is equivalent to “the devil take him!” 

633. foisty bawdias. This exclamation occurs also in the fourth poem against Gar- 
nesche, line 76. It is used, with “Stryke pantnere”, as formulae before drinking in The 
Kyng and the Hermyt, printed by Hazlitt, EEPopPo i, see lines 346, 349, etc. 

635. Dasyng, or staring stupidly, after dotrellis, in the manner of dotterels or foolish 
birds easily caught, “like drunkards that drivel”. 

636. Theis titiwyllis, etc. Titivillus is the name given to the devil-figure of the Towneley 
Mysteries and other late medieval plays. The term became synonymous with any evil-meaning 
evil-doing person. Skelton says that these men were hit and “plugged” with tampions, the 
wooden stoppers of cannon-mouths. 

646 ff. With the description of this garden cp. that depicted by Lydgate in the Churl 
and the Bird. Observe again the lavish coinage of words with prefix en, as in 460 ff. 

646. “I saw where I was brought in an arbor.” Note the inversion, and cp. 654. For 
the arbor see note on Cavendish 115-18; and cp. also the arbor of Doctrine, in the Assembly of 
Gods, with its painted walls. In the Augsburger Geschlechtertanz, of 1522, is depicted an 
arbor in a tree, reached by stairs; see Jahrb. d. kgl. preuss. Kunstsammlungen 32 :230. 

656-7. Again the run-over through one foot of the succeeding line, as in 125-6. With 
this line cp. Churl 53. 

664. In the margin is “Oliua speciosa in campis”, 


PAGE 353] THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 517 


665. The olive branches, symbols of peace, beat or blew up a fire against all rancor. We 
may perhaps note that a crest of the Howards of Norfolk was a pair of expanded wings. 
Note the linking to next strophe. 

666. In the margin is “Nota excellentiam virtutis in oliva”. 

670. soft pipling colde. This phrase is used in George Macdonald’s David Elginbrod. 

675. Thestylis. See note on Barclay’s eclogue iv :690. 

681. Cintheus. Apollo; so called, as his sister Diana is called Cynthia, from their birth- 
place, Mt. Cynthus. 

682-97. Dyce cites the passage, Aeneid i:740 ff., which Skelton here uses :— 


Cithara crinitus Iopas 
Personat aurata, docuit quae maxumus Atlas. 
Hic canit errantem lunam, solisque labores; 
Unde hominum genus, et pecudes; unde imber, et ignes; 
Arcturum, pluviasque Hyadas, geminosque Triones ; 
Quid tantum Oceano properent se tinguere soles 
Hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet. 


683. The poemis, etc. Either read That for The, or he for in. 

691. drowsy chere. This term as applied to the Pleiades I cannot explain. The Hyades, 
sisters to the Pleiades, are termed by Virgil (see note above) pluvias, and by Horace tristes; 
see Carmina i, 3:14. 

693. trions, or triones, ploughing-oxen; a name for the seven principal stars of Ursa 
Major, i.e. Charles’ Wain. The Latin, as cited above, has “geminosque Triones”, probably 
referring to both Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, The first citation of trions in NED is of 1594. 

699. counteryng, singing counter, or by way of “embroidery” upon the simple air. 

713. The opening And seems superfluous. 

725. “That I care very much if it be disclosed’, care to disclose it. 

727-8. “I am not weighed down with lumps of sluggishness [note the inversion] as are 
bewildered dotards who dream in their stupidity.” . 

730. goode yere. A formula-imprecation—“Good luck to you!’ See 986 below. 

736. The Latin heading after this line means:—‘“‘A satire against a poet is interpolated, 
which it requires industry to understand.” The set of numbers appended to the Latin, 
although reproduced here as in the Cotton MS, must be emended to the form given by the 
prints if the name of the person attacked by Skelton is to be deciphered. The puzzle was 
solved by the late Henry Bradley, in the Athenaeum 1896 ii:83; he explained that if the five 
vowels be represented by the numbers 1 to 5, and the consonants by their numbers in the 
alphabet, there will result from these figures the name Rogerus Stathum. Of this personage 
nothing is yet known; but as one of the ladies-in-waiting addressed by Skelton later in this 
poem is Gertrude Statham, and as Skelton hints that he had spoken sharp words to her on a 
previous occasion, it may be that the man Statham, her kinsman, was also a member of the 
Countess’ household and an object of Skelton’s uneasy jealousy. 

The Latin verses have various classical echoes, pointed out by Dyce. The phrase non 
tressis agaso, “a hireling not worth three groats’, is from Persius, Sat. v:76. Davus is in 
Plautus and Terence the name of a slave. The phrase tacita sudant praecordia culpa, “sweat 
with the silent consciousness of sin”, is from Juvenal, Sat. i:167, and the words labra... 
tacitus are from Persius, Sat. v:184. From Virgil, eclogue vii:26, is the half-line rumpantur 
ut ilia Codro, “that Codrus’ sides may burst”. Skelton’s portrait is of a clownish slave who 
rolls his eyes asquint as he catches parasites. If it happen, says Skelton, that you mention 
the things pleasing to Maia or to Jupiter, then suddenly he sweats in silent consciousness 
of wrongdoing; he flames up, urges this man and that man to strife; but none the less he 
fans useless fires, murmuring silent wishes that Codrus may burst his sides. 

The list of deities here agrees with the seven fundamental metals of alchemy, as a mar- 
ginal note in the prints states. It may be that Statham was interested in that science. 

753. Countes of Surrey. This is Elizabeth Stafford, daughter of Edward duke of Buck- 
ingham, and second wife of Thomas Howard earl of Surrey, elder brother of the Admiral 
Howard who is lamented in Barclay’s fourth eclogue. Surrey later, in 1524, became duke of 


518 NOTES [PAGE 355 


Norfolk; he was twenty years older than his wife, and the marriage was unhappy. See the 
duchess’ later letters to Thomas Cromwell, lord of the Privy Seal, complaining bitterly of her 
husband’s cruelty, niggardliness, and infidelity ; these are printed in vol. i of Nott’s ed. of Wyatt 
and Surrey, appendix nos. xxvii-xxxi, and a letter from the duke as no, xxxii. In these 
letters the duchess several times states that she has borne her husband five children. The 
eldest of these was Henry Howard earl of Surrey, the poet, who was at this time not more than 
three years old, while his mother was twenty-six. She was residing with her father-in-law 
at his estate of Sheriff Hutton. Her mother-in-law, Norfolk’s second duchess, Agnes Tilney, 
is not of the little family circle which Skelton addresses. 

769. “That call themselves women.” 

771. Skelton now draws a graceful picture of the “group of noble dames” at their needle- 
work. Sewing, lacemaking, weaving, embroidering, are the various occupations; some work 
on “samplers” (773) or braid lace (773), and some set themselves to weave in the stool, a 
stretcher or tambour-frame mounted on legs for the worker’s convenience. In line 775 are 
enumerated some of the necessary appliances, the slaiys, sleys or weavers’ reeds, the heddles 
or cords sustaining the warp on the loom. Tuly or tewly silk, mentioned in 782, is dark 
red; the botum or bottom of 783 is a skein of thread or the clew on which to wind a skein. 
The tavels of 775 are bobbins on which silk for the shuttle is wound; see Skelton’s poem 
Comely Coystroun 34. 

776-7. Observe the rime of ng:n, also in 779-82 the identical rime. 

779. glutton. This term is clear from the context; but the NED recognizes no meaning 
which would would apply here. 

785. broken workis, not defined in NED, may perhaps, like broken ground, be a raised 
surface, say of heavy embroidery. 

786-7. Castinge is the making of knots on the ends of cords; turnnynge is twisting; 
florisshinge of flowers is the adding of curved lines waving from the blossoms over the 
groundwork. burris rowthe are raised rings; buttunis surfullinge means the embroidery of 
button-like knots. 

801 ff. The sense is that you, Skelton, have to devise this “goodly conceit” (798) because 
you lay claim to the profession of humanity, i.e., the humanities, polite literature. Acknowl- 
edgments are to be made “after ther degre”, that is, in order of the ladies’ rank. 

812. tremlyng fyst. Lydgate’s phrase is “quaking pen”. 

823. my lif enduring, during my life. 

826. “Which hath the highest quality (?) of honor and worship.” This line is used as 
refrain, as was 336 ante.—former date is used by Skelton in his Northumberland 18. 

827 ff. Skelton here makes some use of Boccaccio’s De Claris Mulieribus. In that work 
Argia wife of Polynices is discussed in chap. 27, Pamphila in chap. 42, “Thamar” queen of 
Scythia in chap. 47, “Thamaris pictrix” in chap. 54, and) Agrippina in chap. 88. Between 
Argia and Pamphila Skelton inserts the Biblical Rebecca. The selection of Pamphila and of 
“Thamar pictrix” (stanza 120) is obviously to draw the parallel between their occupations 
and that of the Countess at the time of Skelton’s writing. Pamphila’s discovery of silkworm 
culture and of the mode of weaving silk is described by Boccaccio more fully than here; 
Skelton brushes it all into one generalized line. He could get such a condensed version from 
Pliny’s Natural History xi:26; but neither there nor in Boccaccio is Pamphila more than 
“mulier’’ or “femina’. Thamyris daughter of Mycon the painter was herself an artist; pos- 
sibly the similarity of names takes Skelton from her to “dame Thamaris” the victor over 
Cyrus. But Queen Tomyris and Agrippina seem extraordinary selections from classical story 
to compare with English noblewomen. It is however true that Tomyris exercised a strong 
attraction on the Early Renaissance. In the set of tapestry verses sent to Queen Elizabeth 
by order of Catherine de Medicis, the gift copy of which is now MS Brit. Mus. Royal 20 A xx, 
Tomyris opens the list of 18 famous queens, and is followed by Artemisia, Esther, Plotina 
wife of Trajan, Eudoxia wife of Theodosius, Zenobia, Helena mother of Constantine, Clo- 
tilde,—then by French, Spanish, and English princesses. In Feylde’s Controversy we hear 
(sarcastically?) of Tomyris “so hynde”; in Douglas’ Palice of Honour a group of queens 1s 
“Semiramis, Thamar, Hippolita, Penthessilea, Medea, Zenobia”; Deschamps mentions 


PAGE 357] THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 519 


“Tamaris l’onouree” next after Hippolyta; Lydgate in the FaPrinces ii:3844 ff. narrates at 
length her slaying of Cyrus, Sackville in his Buckingham tragedy (Mirror for Magistrates) 
more briefly; Barclay ecl. iv:1112 merely mentions her. It might be remarked that just as 
the Transition or Early Renaissance included Thamaris among great queens, so it included 
Pasiphae and Sextus Tarquinius among great lovers. The Spaniard Ruiz, in his Libro del 
buen amor, did the latter, and Feylde the former, along with Scylla and Canace; Feylde’s tone 
may be questioned. 

848-61. The Lady Elizabeth Howard who is here addressed is probably the third daughter 
of the then duke of Norfolk by his second wife Agnes Tilney. As the duke married in 
1508-9, and as their son was born 1509-10, the third daughter cannot in 1520 have been more 
than a child of five or six. Cp. 853 below. 

849. Skelton compares Lady Elizabeth to ‘‘Aryna”. Dyce suggests that this may mean 
Trene daughter of Cratinus, described by Boccaccio as above (chap. 57) as an artist and the 
daughter of an artist. 

850. “The well and the perfect basis of virtue and knowledge.’ Cp. Lydgate’s frequent 
complimentary phrases “sours and welle”’, “gynnyng and grounde”. 

855. Polycene. Polyxena daughter of Priam, beloved of Achilles, was in the Middle 
Ages proverbial for beauty and for fidelity in love. See, e.g., the balade of Chaucer’s Legend; 
see Lydgate’s Epithalamium 72 here. 

862. The Lady Muriel Howard may be, as Dyce queries, a daughter of the earl and 
countess of Surrey. According to the countess’ own statement, cited note on 753, ante, she 
bore her husband five children; the eldest of these, afterwards the poet, was in 1520 only about 
three years old, and his sister Mary a year or so younger. Between them and the youngest 
son, born about 1529, intervened two children of whom nothing is recorded, and who died 
early. Perhaps the “lytille lady” Muriel is one. 

869. Cydippes, Cydippe, whose lover Acontius obtained her avowal by flinging at her 
feet an apple wrapped with a letter or “bille’, which she unthinkingly read aloud. 

876. my lady Dakers. Dyce identifies this lady as the wife of Thomas lord Dacre, and 
granddaughter of the then duke of Norfolk by his first wife Elizabeth Tilney. The married 
granddaughter of the first duchess and the girl daughter of the second duchess are thus asso- 
ciated here with the wife of the heir-apparent, the countess of Surrey. Skelton is classical 
and complimentary in his address of Lady Dacre. He praises her beauty, which he declares 
neither Zeuxis nor Apelles could paint, and compares her to Penelope, Deianira, and Diana. 
He does not specifically mention Diana’s supremacy in weaving (see Ovid’s Metamorphoses 
vi), nor Penelope’s industry at the loom. 

879. With the inversion cp. line 217 above. 

890-1063. In these seven short-line lyrics, addressed apparently to damsels of the countess’ 
household, Skelton’s tone and touch change. There are still cumbrous classical allusions, but 
the line-movement is fresh and lilting, and the scent of flowers is about the reader. The first 
of the poems, to Margery Wentworth, is unsubstantial, for three of its five stanzas are 
identical; but its singing quality is marked. Observe the keeping of reference to the occu- 
pation of the group, in the embroidery-simile. 

Margery Wentworth is probably the daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth, eldest son of an 
ancient Yorkshire house, who by his marriage with the daughter of Sir Philip Despenser had 
acquired the manor of Nettlestead, Suffolk. This daughter, who died 1550, married Sir 
John Seymour, by whom she became mother of Henry VIII’s wife Jane Seymour, and 
grandmother to Edward VI. Note that she here outranks all the other ladies-in-waiting. 

890. mageran Jentil. Dyce quotes Gerard’s Herbal to show that this term was applied 
to the best sort of marjoram. 

910. Mistress Margaret Tilney, here addressed, must be a kinswoman of either the first 
or the second duchess of Norfolk, both of whom bore that surname. The student may find 
food for conjecture in Skelton’s language to her; he compares himself to Macareus the 
brother-lover of Canace, and likens her to Canace and to Phaedra, thus using two of the 
more impossible stories of antiquity, of the type rejected by Chaucer in the prologue to his 
Man of Law’s Tale. Dyce quotes a passage from Feylde’s Controversy between a Lover and 


520 NOTES [pace 358 


a Jay to show that the sixteenth century could see in Phaedra, Progne, Pasiphae, and Canace, 
examples of “true love’. But, as said note 827 ante, Feylde’s tone is not certain; nor is 
Skelton’s here. . 

919. Iwus, “iwis’; cp. German gewiss, “certainly”. The i- of this word is a survival 
of the OldEng past-participial ge- prefix, in this case of the verb witan, to know. Modern 
English constantly confuses the word with an imaginary J wis, treating J as a personal pro- 
noun. So frequently in Browning. 

932. perle oryent, i.e., margaret, a pearl. See 485 ante. 

938 ff. The Jane Hassett here addressed, called Jane Blenner haiset in the printed eds., 
is surmised by Dyce to be perhaps a daughter of Sir Thomas Blennerhassett, who was one of 
the executors to the second duke of Norfolk a few years later. 

947. stellify. This word in its first sense meant “to place among the constellations”, as 
Jupiter raised Castor and Pollux, etc.; see HoFame 1002-08. Hence “to make a member of 
the Olympian group”, as Philology by her marriage to Mercury. See Temple of Glass 136. 
Hence, “to exalt, extol”. 

956. Laodomy, Laodamia, one of the classical types of womanly constancy. After the 
death of her husband Protesilaus at Troy, she had an image of him made, upon which she 
centered all her grief. When her father destroyed this, she killed herself. 

957. To Isabel Pennell, now addressed, Skelton uses a much livelier and more familiar 
tone. 

969, 980. The MS reads her, sefhe. 

976. lure. See note Dance Macabre 207. As the lure used in recalling hawks was the 
model of a bird, the sense here may be that of ‘‘type, model”. But the NED gives no 
authority for such interpretation. 

988. Margaret Hussey, another of the countess’ gentlewomen, is now addressed. The 
rimes of the lyric again run in threes, except for the opening and closing lines; but the verse- 
length is varied. My numbering hereafter departs further from that of Dyce, who breaks 
some of the lines written long by the manuscript. 

989. hauke of the towr. A highflying or “towering” hawk; see Magnificence 926. 

1005. Isyphill. Hypsipyle, the beloved of Jason, was another favorite classical heroine of 
the Middle Ages. Chaucer includes her in his Legend of Good Women, and part of her 
story is told by Lydgate, Thebes 3028 ff., with a reference there to Boccaccio’s De Claris 
Mulieribus. 

1007. pomaunder. French pomme d’ambre, a ball, or box containing a ball, of perfumes 
and spices, carried in the latter Middle Ages as a specific against the plague or as a luxury. 
Cardinal Wolsey used often an orange so stuffed; see line 125 of Cavendish here for note. 

1008. Goode Cassander. Does Skelton mean Cassandra, or the herb cassawder, cassava? 

1011-12. “Far may be sought before you can find” etc. 

1016. See note on 736 for similarity of name between this lady-in-waiting and the Roger 
Statham there described. 

1026. dame Pasiphe. Pasiphae, wife of King Minos of Crete, was mother of the 
monster Minotaur by a bull. See notes on 827, 910 ante. 

1054, 1059. Delete the colon at end of 1057 and place period at end of 1059. Skelton 
says that Galatea was extolled by Virgil; she is briefly mentioned in the third eclogue, but 
her story is more fully told in Theocritus, 

1074. Master Newton. Dyce makes no note at this point. Apparently the duke’s house- 
hold included a man whose occupation was draughting, illuminating, and scrivener-work. He 
is using compasses, a plummet or ?leadpencil, a penselle or brush of fine hair; he wears spec- 
tacles. For these last see note on line 54 of London Lickpenny here. The word pencil is 
used to mean “brush” as late as Tennyson, Gardener’s Daughter 26; the term plummet for a 
leadpencil is not cited NED earlier than 1634, but see note here on Palladius, line 3 of 
extract A. 

1108 ff. “The usual amount of your grace has been and yet is in proportion to all which 
suits with reason, unless hasty credence, by the urge of force, should happen to stand” etc.— 
fortune, 1112, is a verb, as in 85 above. 


PAGE 361] THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 521 


1134-40 are used, with appropriate border, as title page to Madden’s Illuminated Orna- 
ment, London 1833. 

1135. golden railles. The NED gives no clue here. What is meant may be something 
like “strap-work”, which the NED defines as “an ornament consisting of a narrow fillet or 
band arranged in loops, sometimes of two such bands interlaced”. This was much used in 
the 15th and 16th cents., especially in Flanders and Germany. Gollancz speaks of the Shirley 
MS now owned by the Prince of Wales (see p. 193) as having “borders of gold strap-work 
and flowers”. 

1145. aurum musicum. Read aurum mosaicum, a bronze powder used by painters. 

1148. In the margin by stanza 140 is, in small type:—“Honor est benefactiue operacionis 
signum: Aristotiles: Diuerte a malo & fac bonum; Pso. Nobilis est ille quem nobilitat sua 
virtus: Cassianus. Proximus ille deo qui scit racione tacere. Cato. Mors vltima linea 
rerum. Horat.” 

1150 ff. A list of Skelton’s works now follows. Many of them are lost; and in giving the 
catalogue, Occupation makes no distinction as to length or importance, nor as to date of 
composition. Manerly Margery is discussed through two stanzas, while the translation of 
Cicero’s Ad Familiares is given one line. The early-executed rendering of Diodorus Siculus 
is mentioned far down the list, line 1463. 

Skelton opens, stanza 140, with books on Honorous Estate, on How Men Should Flee 
Sin, on Royal Demeanor, on How to Speak Well, on How to Die. None of these has yet 
been identified with existing work; the last-mentioned is perhaps, as Dyce suggested, a ver- 
sion of the same original as Caxton used for his 1490 “Crafte to Know Well to Dye’. There 
follow in stanza 141 the Interlude of Virtue, the Book of the Rosiar, Prince Arthur’s Creation 
(i.e., assumption of the dignity of Prince of Wales, in 1489), a book on False Faith, dialogues 
of Imagination, “Antomedon of love’s meditation”, a new grammar, and the Bowge of Court. 
The last exists; and Brie identifies the Book of the Rosiar with the poem printed by Dyce i 
to follow page viii. See EnglStud 37:49. Upon Antomedon, or better “Automedon’, line 
1159, Brie has an important note in Archiv 138:228. Among the poets of the Anthologia 
Graeca, he tells us, was an epigrammatist named Automedon, to whom there are assigned 
eleven epigrams. The tenth is, in the Latin version of Duebner’s ed. ii:294,— 


Felix est primum quidem qui nulli quidquam debet ; 
dein qui non duxit uxorem, tertio qui est sine liberis. 

si vero insanus uxorem duxerit quispiam, habet gratiam, 
si defodiat statim uxorem, dotem nactus magnam. 

Haec edoctus sapiens esto; incassum vero Epicurum sine 
ubi sit vacuum quaerere, et quae sint monades. 


Brie remarks that however trivial this seems to us, it had interest for the Renaissance; it was 
for instance translated by Ronsard in 1560. 

1155. In the margin by stanza 141 is:—“Virtuti omnia parent: Salust. Nusquam tuta 
fides: Virgiliws. Res est solliciti plena timoris amor. Ouid. Si vacet vsus quem penes &c. 
Horace.” 

1162 ff. In stanza 142 are listed a comedy Academios and the translation of Tully’s 
(i.e., Cicero’s) Ad Familiares, neither now known; a book Good Advisement (not known, but 
see Skelton’s Replycacion 360-61), the Recule against Gaguin, a few lines of which have been 
discovered by Brie (see EnglStud 37:32), and The Popinjay, which is perhaps the existing 
Speke Parrot. 

In the margin by this stanza is: “Non est timor dei ante oculos eorum. Spalmo. Concedat 
laurea lingue. Tulliws. Fac cum consilio & in eternum non peccabis. Salamon.” 

1169 ff. This stanza mentions a pamphlet on Sovereignty (not known), and Magnificence. 
In the margin by this and the next stanza is:—“Non mihi sit modulo rustica papilio. Uates. 
Dominare in virtute tua. Pso. Magwificauit eum in conspectu regum. Sapiencia. Fugere 
pudor verumque fidesque. In quorum subiere locum fraudesque dolique. Insidieque et vis et 
amor scileratus habendi. Ouid. Filia Babilonis misera. Psalmo.”’ 


522 NOTES [PAGE 361 


1176 ff. Two stanzas are now devoted to the various poems addressed to “Manerly Mar- 
gery”, only one of which is known today. Skelton breaks into rollicking doggerel coarseness 
as easily as he had earlier broken into song; he either likes his subject here or believes it 
interesting to the countess, for he disports himself at length with allusion incomprehensible to 
us. We perceive only that “Margery” is a woman of loose life but pretended honesty. Some- 
thing further about her may be contained in the Latin verses, as yet unsolved. These Latin 
lines are omitted from the numbering here, while the two English lines are included. The 
last Latin line is unconnected with what precedes, and serves to summarize work by Skelton. 

1183. In the margin by stanza 145 is:—‘“De nihilo nihil fit. Aristotiles. Le plus dis- 
pleysant pleiser puent.” 

1188. Cp. the proverbial “It may well ryme but it acordeth nought”, used as refrain in 
the poem printed as Lydgate’s by Halliwell, Min Poems, p. 55. 

1191 ff. As Dyce notes, “my ladys grace” perhaps refers to the countess of Derby, mother 
of Henry VII; see also Brie in EnglStud 37:9. By the Peregrination of Man’s Life Skelton 
may mean a translation of Guillaume de Deguilleville’s Pélerinage, a very popular three-part 
poem of the fourteenth century, the first of the three pilgrimages being of man’s life, the 
second of the soul, the third of Christ. Lydgate’s verse-translation of the first part exists, 
but Skelton’s prose is today unknown. Of the Red Rose treatise nothing is now known. 

Beside stanzas 146 and 147 runs the marginal note:—‘‘Notat bellum cornubiense quod 
in campistribus & in patencioribus vastique solitudinibus prope Grenewich gestum est.” 
Beside 146 is the note:—‘“‘Apostolus. Non habemus hic ciuitatem manentem sed futuram 
perquerimus”’. 

1199. In the margin by stanza 147 is:—“Erudemini qui iudicatis terram. Pso.” 

1202. This treatise, written for Henry VIII’s boyhood, is not now known. Skelton was 
at the time “‘creancer” or tutor to the boy-prince. Dyce remarks that a manuscript of Precepta 
Moralia compiled by Skelton for Henry was once in the library of Lincoln Cathedral, but is 
now missing. Such handbooks were very numerous in the late Middle Ages; cp. Hoccleve’s 
Regement of Princes, Ashby’s Active Policy of a Prince, Barclay’s transl. of Mancini, 
Hawes’ effort to combine precept and entertainment in his Pastime of Pleasure, Spenser him- 
self,—etc. For the Speculum-title see note on Ship of Fools 85. 

1206-07. The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng and Colin Clout still exist. John Ive is 
possibly, as Dyce suggests, a lost work using the heretical teacher John Ive’s name in its 
title. Joforth Iack means “Get up, Jack!” and Dyce thinks that the phrase was used as a 
sort of refrain in the poem John Ive. But it must be noted that as “with Colyn Clout” intro- 
duces a separate work, a separate poem may here also be meant. 

In the margin by stanza 148 is:—“Quis stabit mecum aduersus operantes in iniquitatem. 
Pso. Arrident melius seria picta iocis. In fabulis isopi.” 

1210. whyte ... blacke. See note on Hawes’ Pastime 1349. 

1211. conueyauns, conveyance, is cunning, underhand dealing. See the play Magnificence. 

1212. vse the walshemannys hoos. Dyce explains this as parallel to the proverbial use 
of “shipman’s hose” to mean something which can be indefinitely adapted and stretched. See 
Colin Clout 780. 

1213. These poems do not exist. A poem addressed to “Mistress Anne” is printed by 
Dyce i:20, and a fragmentary copy of another is printed by Brie in Engl Stud 37 :29-30, from 
a text discovered by him on a guardleaf of MS Trin. Coll. Cambr. R 3, 17. 

In the margin by stanza 149:—“Implent veteris Bacchi pinguisque ferine. Virgilius. Aut 
prodesse volunt aut delectare poete. Horace.’ 

1216. Where it became, “what became of it”. See FaPrinces C 20 here. 

1218. The Ballad of the Mustard Tart is now unknown. 

1220. Adame all. This epitaph may be read in Dyce i:171-3. Line 1221 means “let him 
sleep in peace like a dormouse”’, 

In the margin by stanza 150 is:—“Adam adam vbi es. genesis. Resp. Vbi nulla requies 
vbi nullus ordo sed sempiternus horror inhabitat. Job”. 

1227 ff. Philip Sparrow was contemptuously treated by Barclay; see the close of the 
Ship of Fools. Although the Ship was printed in 1508, twelve years earlier than the Garland 


PAGE 362] THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 323 


was written, it must be that Barclay’s scorn still rankled, or that there had been more recent 
criticism, by Barclay or another. For the allusion to Philip Sparrow sends Skelton off on a 
detour of a hundred lines in the short couplet of that poem, an excursus which indeed appears 
in the early prints as “an adicyon made by Maister Skelton”. See Dyce i:90-92. 

In the margin by stanza 151 is:—“Etenim passer inuenit sibi domum. spalmo”. 

1242. His dirige, etc. Skelton says: ‘‘What ails (such jangling jays) to carp at Philip 
Sparrow’s grave, at his dirige?” Her commendation, i.e., the praise of Philip’s owner in 
the poem, cannot be matter of fault finding; it was joyous material, put in so that no one 
be displeased at the burial-song for Philip. 

1250-55. In praising Jane or Joanna Scrope, the young girl-owner of Philip Sparrow, 
Skelton compares her to Lucretia, Polyxena, Calliope, Penelope, etc. She was thus “set and 
sorted”, that is, placed and classed, with women of dignity. 

1257. Hercules took out of hell Cerberus, his own friends Theseus and Pirithous, and 
Alcestis. The term “harrow hell” is applied in Middle English to Christ’s descent into hell 
and removal from it of Adam, Eve, and the patriarchs, as related in the apocryphal gospel 
of Nicodemus. Warner, describing Hercules’ exploits in his Albion’s England, book i, says 
that he “harrowed Hell”. 

1259. Is Skelton thinking of Georgics iii:44,—“domitrix Epidaurus equorum’’? Is he 
arbitrarily connecting that place with the horse-men, and constructing a form for rime? 

1264. Hercules wounded and captured, but did not slay, the Maenalian hind, which had 
horns of gold and hoofs of brass. This was his fourth labor. 

1267 ff. Hercules’ eleventh labor was the obtaining of the apples of the Hesperides, which 
were guarded by a serpent. His tenth labor was the slaying of the three-bodied Geryon. 

1277. lyon sauage, the Nemaean lion, slain as the first labor. 

1278-81. The mares of Diomed were captured as Hercules’ ninth labor. 

1280. The rouncy was a common hackney or nag, more a farmhorse than a “steed”. 

1282-7. The bull here mentioned is a shape taken by the river-god Achelous, who fought 
in that form with Hercules for the possession of Deianira, but was defeated and deprived of 
one of his horns. Ovid, Metam. ix :86-7, says that the Naiads changed this horn into the horn 
of plenty; he makes Achelous say :— 


Naides hoc, pomis et odoro flore repletum, 
Sacrarunt; divesque meo Bona Copia cornu est. 

1288. Skelton has conjured Philip Sparrow by Hercules, who harrowed Hell; now he 
calls on him by Hecate’s power in the underworld, by the Eumenides or Fates, by the 
Lernaean hydra, by the Chimaera (1296), by the river Styx (1300), by Cocytus, by Charon, 
by Saul and the incantations of the witch who raised Samuel, by Diana, Luna, and Proserpine,— 
by all those who have power in Hades; then he asks (1336) what is the cause of this 
perplexity? 

1310. Primo regum expres, “in the first book of Kings expressly set forth”. 

1311. Phitones. A Pythoness or witch is a woman possessed of an evil spirit which 
speaks. The name is ultimately from the Vulgate; in First Chronicles x:13 the modern 
rendering “one that hath a familiar spirit” appears as “pythonissa’; and in First Samuel 
xXxviii:7 the witch of Endor is “mulier pythonem habens”. The NED opines that a connec- 
tion with Pythia was felt in the coinage of the word. In the form Phitonesse it is frequent 
in Middle English; see Chaucer’s HoFame 1261, Friar’s Tale 212, Gower’s Confessio iv :1937, 
etc. The NED cites Pythoness as late as Byron. 

1321. idem numero, the same (as) in the Book of Numbers. 

1326-7. Skelton says: “I will leave it to lettered men generally to say (whether that 
spirit were the same Samuel as appears in the Book of Numbers)”. See Lydgate’s FaPrinces 
11 :451 ff. 

1330-32. Diana is invoked in her three forms, earthly, heavenly, infernal. 

1337. The words “Phillyppe answeryth” are found in the margin by the Latin line 
beginning “Nunc pudet”; it is probable that they refer only to the latter part of that line. 
The sense is: “O Philip, fair Joanna Scrope urgently implores thy deeps of hell; why does 
she now shrink in modesty from our song?—It is [too?] late; infamy is less than truth.” 


524 NOTES [PAGE 363 


1342. The sense is: ‘““‘Why, O sallow Envy, dost thou condemn the pious funeral rites of 
a bird? May such Fates snatch thee as snatch the bird! But envy is to thee an unending 
death.” (Does this point at Barclay?) 

1343. In the margin by stanza 152 is:—“Porcus se ingurgitat ceno & luto se immergit: 
Guarinus Veronensis. Et sicut oportorium mutabis eos & mutabuntur. Pso, C, Exultabuntur 
cornua iusti: spalmo.”’ The same collocation of gr-words appears in the second poem against 
Garnesche ; see Dyce i:118 line 2. 

1344. “The mourning of the maple-root”. Dyce points out that this lost poem is prob- 
ably alluded to in one line of a song of 1609,—“Why weepst thou, maple root?” 

1345-7. On this poem I can give no information; the lines may or may not sketch the 
plot of the Maple Root. 

1348. Moyses hornis. The Vulgate translation of Exod. xxxiv:29 says that Moses, 
descending from Sinai, knew not “quod cornuta esset facies sua ex consortio sermonis 
Domini”. St. Jerome, making the translation, was here misled by the Hebrew word meaning 
“tq emit rays”, which also meant “to put forth horns”. Hence the horned Moses of Michel- 
angelo; hence, e.g., Lydgate’s allusions PilgLifeMan 1398, 1580, and Proc. Corpus Christi 50. 

1349. stormis. Marshe reads scornes. 

1350. paiauntis, etc. Dyce in a long note argues that this stanza does not refer to 
“theatrales ludos”’ such as Bale includes in his list of Skelton’s writings, but to “things that 
were done” in Joyous Gard. As this was the name of Lancelot’s castle, Skelton may be 
alluding to some aristocratic escapade or pageant of which the countess knew, and perhaps 
of which he had written disguisedly. 

1351. muse. Marshe reads mows. In the margin here is:—‘“Tanquam parieti inclinato & 
macerie depulse. spalmo. Militat omnis amans et habet sua castra Cupido. Ouid.” 

1354. Dyce cites Cavendish’s use of this phrase to mean Castle St. Angelo in Rome. 
But a student who reads, in Brewer and Gairdner’s Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, 
ii:1510-11 etc., the long list of names of halls, tents, and pavilions, may query if this name 
were not applied to some English building, or even some pageant such as the “Gardyn de 
Esperance” described ibid., p. 1509. 

1357 ff. Again Skelton pours out a stream of disguised allusions, which his older hearers 
may have understood, but which are blind to us. Line 1357 means “‘the recital of the group 
of poems dealing with Rosamond’s Bower’. As the phrase “mok loste her sho” in 1363 
seems to be part of a narrative of a love-affair, it may be used as was the phrase “tread her 
shoe amiss”, which meant sexual misdoing, for a woman. But in Why Come Ye 83 the 
locution is less probably of this sort. 

In the margin by the stanza is:—‘Introduxit me in cubuculum suum. Cant. Os fatue 
ebullit stultitiam. Cant.” 

1358. pleasaunt paine, etc. This rhetorical device of “opposites” goes back, like so much 
else of late medieval poetic mannerism, to Ovid. Schroetter in his Ovid und die Troubadours 
points out that “pleasant pain’ was a commonplace of Roman elegies, later a commonplace 
of Provencal lyric. He cites Ovid’s dulce malum, the Troubadours’ doussa dolors. Medieval 
Latin rhetoricians worked the device freely; St. Augustine uses it, and it is very frequent in 
Alanus. Chaucer is sparing of it; see Troilus ii:1099; and Lydgate has not many cases. It 
is often employed by Petrarch. 

1367. Exione. Possibly Hesione, sister of Priam, taken captive by King Telamon and 
the Greeks in an expedition which slew Priam’s father Laomedon and ravaged Troy, see 
Lydgate’s Troy Book ii. It was in revenge for this that Paris made his incursion into 
Greece and carried off Helen, a deed followed by the Ten Years’ War. Hesione herself 
plays no part in the Troy Book, but her name appears in some late medieval lists; eg., 
Feylde in his Controversy says ‘““Where is Semele and Iocasta, Cleoparte and Ixionya?” etc. 
And Douglas in his Palice of Honour, ed. Small i:23, writes “Jole, Hercules, Alcest, Ixion”. 
Christine de Pisan in the Epistle of Othea mentions “Esyona’. The Troy Book story of 
Hesione is quite other than the usual classical narrative as in e.g., Diodorus Siculus iv, chap. 
42, or as in Hyginus’ Fabulae no. 89. 

Lines 1367 and 1368 are quite inexplicable to me. Marsh reads “her lambe is”. 


PAGE 364] THE GARLAND OF LAURELL 525 


In the margin by stanza 155 is:—‘‘Audaces fortuna iuuat. Uirgilius. Nescia mens 
hominum sortis fatique futuri. Uirgilius” (Aeneid x:501). 

1371-7. The structure of this stanza is freakish. The usual rime-scheme is kept, but 
there is appended to each line a foot monorimed throughout, while the five-stress movement 
is quite lost. 

In the margin by the stanza is:—“Oleeque minerua inuentrix. Georgicorum (see i:18-19). 
Atque agmina cerui puluerulenta glomerant. Eneid. 4” (see 154-5). 

1377. A proverb:—With little occupation much rest is possible. 

1378 ff. In the margin by this stanza is:—‘‘Due molentes in pistrino vna assumetur altera 
relinquetur. Isaias. Foris vastabit eum timor et intus pravor. Pso.” 

1383. Swassham and Some, i.e., Swaffham(?) and Soham. Swaffham is in Norfolk, 
about 25 miles from Norwich, and Soham is six miles from Ely. Both places have fine 
early churches. 

1385 ff. In the margin by this stanza is:—“Opera que ego facio ipsa perhibent testimonium 
de me. In euang. &c.”—wofully arayd. A poem opening thus has been preserved, and is 
printed with Skelton’s work by Dyce i:141. Brie in EnglStud 37:22-25 discusses this text 
and an earlier using the same phrase; he concludes that the poem printed by Dyce is probably 
not Skelton’s. 

1386. Another inverted line; see 217 ante and note. This line is appositive with that 
preceding. 

1387. Uexilla regis. Dyce identifies this with a poem which he prints i:144. Brie, Engl- 
Stud 37 :25-6, questions. 

1388. sacris solempniis. Dyce doubts if this be a transl. of the Latin hymn beginning 
“Sacris solemniis juncta sunt gaudia”. 

1392 ff. In the margin by stanza 159 is:—‘Honora medicum propter necessitatem creauit 
eum altissimus &c. Superiores lationes influunt in corpora subiecta et disposita &c. Nota.” 

1392-3. Here are mentioned a group of ancient physicians, Galen, Dioscorides, Hippo- 
crates, Avicenna. 

1395. Albumazar, an Arabian astrologer of the ninth century. 

1397 ff. Skelton now runs into a whirl of proverbs and madcap nonsense. Stanza 160 
is a compound of proverbs. Line 1400, “Dun is in the myre”’, is a Christmas game the title 
of which coincided with or passed into a proverb; the meaning is, “We are in a tight place”. 
See Skeat’s note CantTales H 5. 

1399. In the margin beside this stanza is:—‘‘Spectatum admisse risus teneatur amor. 
Horace.” 

1401-02 are transposed in the Faukes print. 

1406 ff. In the margin is:—‘Lumen ad reuelacionem gentium. Pso. clxxv.” If “sol 
lucerne” means “sunlight” and “grand iuir’ means “long winter’, the French proverb here 
referred to is parallel to the Anglo-Saxon saying that if the ground hog sees his shadow on 
February second (Candlemas Day) there will be six weeks more of winter. The ‘‘Marion 
clarion” part of the stanza alludes probably to some story of Skelton’s own making, and 
says that cold and clouds descended upon this goodly flower and untwined her (i.e., tore her 
to pieces). The bracketed addition to line 1410 appears only in the Faukes print, and may 
be a gloss. 

1413 ff. In the margin is:—‘Uelut rosa vel lilium O pulcherrima mulierum. &c. Cant. 
ecclesia.” 

1418-19. See the proverb in Churl and Bird 374. Barclay in his Mancini-translation also 
uses it. 

1420 ff. In the margin is:—“Notate verba signata misteria. Gregori.” 

1422. mary gipcy. St. Mary Egyptiaca, the ‘“Egipcien Marie” of Chaucer’s Man of Law’s 
Tale 402, is often confused with St. Mary Magdalen by the similarity of their stories. 

1423. Quod scripsi, scripsi. So said Pilate, John xix :22. 

1424-27. Dyce thinks that Skelton alludes to Luke i:13. If we credit Bale’s report that 
Skelton was disciplined for maintaining an illegal wife, we might refer to Luke xx:35. 


526 NOTES [PAGE 365 


1428, 1432. Marshe reads Asshrige. Dyce has a full note here. There was a College 
of the Bonhommes at Ashridge in Buckinghamshire, which cherished as relic a portion of 
the blood of Jesus, brought over in the reign of Henry III by Edmund of Cornwall, the king’s 
nephew and founder of the College. Another portion of the sacred blood, “sang royall’’, was 
deposited at Hailes Abbey; see PardTale 324 and Skeat’s note. Both societies were in con- 
sequence sought by many pilgrims, and must have kept open house, see line 1432. On the 
Ashridge fraternity see Todd, History of the College of the Bonhommes at Ashridge, 
London, 1823. It may be remarked that the noble “Ellesmere” manuscript of the Canterbury 
Tales is possibly of Ashridge provenance, 

1434. Skelton says that he has made a “distinction”, or definition of the College, which 
follows in the two Latin lines. In these, the ‘“‘fraxinus in clivo”’ is an ash-tree on a cliff or 
ridge,—Ashridge; and it flourishes without a supply of living water. 

1435'ff. In the margin is:—‘Nota. Penuriam aque nam canes ibi hauriunt ex puteo 
altissimo. Stultorum infinitus est numerus, &c. Ecclesiasticus. Factum est cum apollo esset 
corinthi: Actws apostolorum. Stimulos sub pectore vertit Apollo. Uirgilius—The nacyoun 
of folys.” This was connected by Dyce with The Boke of Three Folys, which he reprinted 
i:199 from the 1568 Skelton. But Brie, EnglStud 37:18-21, points out that these three 
prose chapters are from the translation of the Ship of Fools made by Henry Watson and 
pubd. slightly earlier than that of Barclay. We have accordingly to say that Skelton’s work 
here mentioned is unknown to us. 

1436. Apollo... whirllid vp his chare. This line is the first of two which are all that 
remain of a third part of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale. It seems to have caught the fancy of 
later versifiers. The author of the Flower and the Leaf begins his poem with it; the trans- 
lator of Charles d’Orléans uses the line, see p. 230 here; and apparently Skelton opened 
one of his tirades with it. This poem he now wishes to efface from Fame’s record, but she 
refuses,—stanza 165. 

1442 ff. In the margin is:—“Fama repleta malis per virilis euolat alis, &c.” 

1449 ff. In the margin is:—“Ego quidem sum Pauli, ego Apollo: Cor.” 

1455. ragman rollis. This phrase is variously applied in Middle English to an important 
legal document and to a game, the point of contact being that in the game a roll of verses, 
individual “characters”, was used, having separate pendent strings like the pendent seals of 
the document. The word “ragman” is still in dispute etymologically; Skeat (Piers Plow- 
man A prol. 73 and C xix:122) suggests a Scandinavian connection with the word ragmenni, 
“coward”. Such a term might have been applied to the Scottish nobles who signed allegiance 
to Edward I, and thereafter, on this theory, any document with seals might be so called. 
But Nares and others think that the game may have antedated the use of the word for law- 
documents; with this opinion I may compare the French poem in Montaiglon and Raynaud’s 
Recueil général des Fabliaux, 1878, iii:247-8. Here an aristocratic company plays at “roy- 
qui-ne-ment”, a sort of forfeits-game. Froissart twice mentions the game, and Langlois in 
Roman. Forsch. 23 :163-73 discusses it, citing an allusion as early as 1285. With the roi of this 
game cp. the Greek game Basilinda and its elected king, also the late Mid Eng (tautological ?) 
use of King Ragman. The word ragment came to mean any sort of discourse; see its use 
by Douglas, Dunbar, and Lyndesay. Gower, Confessio viii :2378-9, mentions the game; Udall 
in his transl. of Erasmus’ Apophthegms, 1542, renders “Fescennina carmina” by “ragmans 
rewe”, and then explains the word as “a long iest that raileth on any person by name” etc. 
Here the phrase means “list”. 

1456 ff. In the margin is:—‘‘Malo me galathea petit lasciua puella. Virgilius. Nec si 
muneribus certes concedet Iollas. 2. Bucol.” 

1460-62. Three lost works by Skelton are now mentioned:—Of the Maiden of Kent 
called Comfort, Of Lovers’ Testaments, and How Iollas Loved Phillis. Iollas is mentioned 
in Virgil’s second eclogue, line 57, as a wealthy rival to Corydon. In the collection of 
Bucolica brought together by the printer Oporinus in 1546 are eclogues entitled Jolas, by an 
unknown author and by Stigelius. 

1463 ff. In the margin is:—“Mille hominum species & rerum discolor vsus. Horace.— 
Diodorus Siculus. This translation of part of Diodorus, done from the Latin of Poggio, 


a 


PAGE 366] THE METRICAL VISIONS 527 


was mentioned by Caxton in the preface to his 1490 translation of the Aeneid, along with 
the translation of Cicero’s Letters; both must therefore have been executed in Skelton’s 
young manhood. An imperfect copy of the Diodorus exists in MS 357 of Corpus Christi 
College, Cambridge. 

1470 ff. In the margin is:—“Millia milium & decies millies centena millia &c. Apoca- 
lipsis. Uite senatum laureati possident. Ecclesiastica. Cauit.”’ 

1480. Janus refers to an approaching January. The Latin following stanza 170 says:— 
“Dost thou desire to know what meaning may be in this for thee? Then advise thy mind; 
like Janus, look forward and back.” Note the feminine aemula; Skelton is addressing a 
woman. Marshe’s edition reads Mens, Faukes’ Meus; Marshe reads sis in the second line, 
Faukes sit. In the margin by the Latin couplet is :—‘‘Uates”.—Skelton now addresses his 
book, using Latin and English in turn. He says: Go forth, O radiant light of the Britons! 
Our songs, do ye celebrate your worthy British Catullus! Say that Skelton is your Adonis, 
your Homer! 


CAVENDISH’S METRICAL VISIONS 


1 ff. Cavendish fixes the date of his poem astronomically, as Chaucer did the prologue to 
the Canterbury Tales, as Lydgate did his Siege of Thebes, Black Knight, etc., and as did 
many earlier writers; see note on Thebes lines 1 here. Cavendish’s contemporary Robert 
Copland, in his Hye Wey to the Spyttel Hous, expressly declined such mode of dating a 
work; but modern poets have not ignored the effect of allusion to the great stars or constella- 
ions. Thus Chatterton in his February, Thomson at the opening of his Autumn and of his 
Winter; thus Tennyson in the third part of Maud; thus Hardy in the second chapter of 
Far from the Madding Crowd,—‘‘The Dog Star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless 
Pleiades, were halfway up the southern sky”. Still more archaic is the method of Hous- 
man,—“The sun at noon to higher air. Unharnessing the silver Pair That late before his 
chariot swam, Rides on the gold wool of the Ram”. We may recollect Housman’s strong 
interest in astrology. 

4. sygne retrogradaunt. This means that the constellation or “sign” was on the western 
or descending side of the meridian line. 

24-30. Idelnes. Sloth was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and medieval writers fre- 
quently state that their work is undertaken to avoid the “mater vitiorum omnium”. Peckham, 
Archbishop of Canterbury 1279-1292, in his treatise De Paupertate chap. 9, says “Labor 
principaliter inventus est pro otio excludendo”. De Vignay in the prol. to his transl. of the 
Legenda Aurea speaks of the dangers of “oysiuete’, and Chaucer at the opening of the 
Second Nun’s Tale says that he intends to eschew idleness; see Brown in ModPhil 9:1-16 
on the source. The lover in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchesse wrote songs to keep himself 
from idleness; the compiler of the Scottish Legendary, ca. 1400, worked “for til eschew 
idilnes”. Copland in the prol. to his Kalender of Shepeherdes gives the same reason for his 
undertaking; and the list could be indefinitely extended. See note on Hawes 1313 here, and 
for sloth in a lover see note on Reproof line 4. See also line 47 below, Barclay’s prol. ecl. 51, 
Ship 134, etc. 

31-2. Compare Copland’s introd. to Nevill as ante, p. 289. 

38. Cavendish says that should he choose as his theme the high courage of men of rank, 
he would lack examples of it in England because covetousness has so sorely impaired chivalry. 
Cp. Copland as just noted. 

52. The request to correct is very common in the medieval period. Chaucer at the close 
of his Venus apologized for his inadequacy; and the phrases of excuse which he put into the 
mouth of his Franklin were taken as model by Lydgate, by Bokenam, and by others, who 
added to the apology an entreaty that the patron correct shortcomings. Chaucer makes such 
a request only at the close of his Troilus, and addresses it to fellow-writers, to Gower and 
to Strode; but Lydgate is profuse of it. See for instance Dance Macabre 660, Churl and 
Bird 385, ResonandSens 32-40, Troy Book i:30 ff., the close of St. Edmund, etc. When 
translating Laurent’s version of the De Casibus, Lydgate could also find it in the French— 
“ie le laisse et remetzi en la correction et amendment des sages hommes”. Cp. also the last 


528 NOTES [PAGE 371 


stanza of La Belle Dame, Skelton’s Garland 1525 ff., very often in Caxton, etc. In the 
Temple of Glass 1400 Lydgate says that he himself will correct if his patroness so desires. 
It is possibly the dependence of formal literature on patronage which gives this request to 
correct so wide a currency. See note on Shirley II: 71 here. 

61. colours. This word has in late Middle or early Modern English three senses :—(1) 
pretext, as in FaPrinces i:5223, “Under a colour off liberalitie’; (2) rhetorical ornament, 
see note on FaPrinces G 46 here; (3) the fable under which a moral truth is conveyed; sce 
Hawes’ Pastime 740, 1297. 

63. wofull style. Chaucer, Troilus i:12-14, said that a “sory chere”’ suits well a sor- 
rowful tale; and in SqTale 102-4 he said ‘““Acordaunt to his wordes was his chere, As techeth 
art of speche hem that it lere’. Lydgate, making similar statements in Black Knight 183-4, 
Troy Book iii:5453-57, especially FaPrinces vi:3144-50 (G 197-203 here), says in the last- 
named passage that men may read this doctrine in Tullius. In De Oratore ii:148, §35, we 
read “—ut eius . . . vultus denique perspiciamus omnis, qui sensus animi plerumque indicant’. 
See also ibid., iii:221, §59, and cp. Ovid, Fasti ii:755, ‘“—facies animo dignaque parque fuit”. 
Alanus says in his Anticlaudianus iii, cap. 4:7, 8 that the countenance is “nuntius, interpres 
verax animique figura”. See Lydgate’s description of the actors, Troy Book ii: 905 ff.; see 
Hawes’ Pastime 1172 ff. Allied are FaPrinces ix :3447 and Henryson’s Testament of Cres- 
seid 1-2. See note on FaPrinces G 197 here. 

65 ff. Caliope wyll refuse, etc. This line is imitated from FaPrinces prol. 241, see p. 160 
here. In it and in 456-58 Lydgate says that ditties of complaining do not fit Calliope and 
the Muses. He had already said this in the Temple of Glass 952-4; and the rhetorical ques- 
tion of that passage,—‘‘Allas to whom shal I for help call?” is repeated FaPrinces prol. 240 
and by Cavendish 64 here. Chaucer had said, Troilus i:6, 7 and iv:22-24, that the Furies alone 
are fit patronesses of a woeful tale; and Lydgate adopts this convention, e.g., in DuorMere 
505, Troy Book iii:5428 ff. Cavendish calls on God for aid, though not rejecting the Muses for 
religious reasons, as Walton had done, see his Boethius A 60-64 and note. 

79. frome. The writing of an inorganic final e is frequent in Cavendish’s orthography; 
cp., in these extracts, frome 182, 1359, 1373, bye 176, hyme 173, 263, 266, 1139 and epitaph 39, 
ame 229, 231, 1382, theme 114, 1113, whome 154, 157, 266, 1316, etc. This inorganic e is also 
frequent in the copies of Chaucer and of Lydgate executed by John Shirley. 

85. Cavendish opens his pageant of the fallen great with Wolsey, his late master, Car- 
dinal and Archbishop of York,—Eboracensis. The career of Wolsey, born a grazier’s son, 
educated at Oxford, favored by Henry because of his conspicuous ability, and deprived of his 
enormous wealth and power when his arrogance and excess, more especially his failure to 
obtain Henry’s divorce from Katharine, had aroused the despot’s anger,—is one of the 
perennially interesting stories of the world. 

93. legate de latere. There are three classes of Papal legates,—legati nati, legati missi, 
and legati a latere. The first-named hold this ambassadorial power by virtue of their office; 
the second are deputed by the Pope for some special occasion, and the third, chosen by the 
Pope from among the Cardinals, exercise his power in some foreign country, where they 
reside. See note on 141. 

101. fynne instead of fyne. Note the similar orthography in 43, 226; note fynne: dynne 
in 120-122; note wynne 131, lynne 1302, also basse 1165, mattes for mates in 1188. That a 
soft bed was a luxury in the Middle Ages we may infer from 246 and from Dance Macabre 
252. The inventory of Wolsey’s possessions written out in MS Brit. Mus. Harley 599 lists, 
in the expenditures for 1527, “A bedde for my Lordes owne lying, 8 mattresses, every one 
of them stuffed with 13 pounds of carded wulle”. See Hoccleve’s Lerne to Dye 778, and the 
original in Suso’s Horologium,—‘Tolle, tolle a me lectisterniorum molliciem’, etc. 

104-5. This means that there was nothing in the world Wolsey could desire which For- 
tune would not at once give him. 

106. Very little remains of the interior decoration of Hampton Court, to which Cay- 
endish is probably alluding here; but Law, in his History of Hampton Court Palace (1885) 
1:53, describes the beautiful ceiling of one small room still existing, ribbed with moulded 
wood, gilt, and with a light blue ground. The interest of the late Middle Ages in the roofs 


PAGE 372] THE METRICAL VISIONS 529 


of halls and reception rooms was very great; cp. Hawes’ Pastime 349-50 and refs. given in 
note. Cp. also the romances, e.g. Syr Degrevaunt, for roofs “craftely entaylled”. 

111. Expertest artificers. A large number of the painters, carvers, and workers in 
plaster or terra-cotta who were employed on Hampton Court Palace by Wolsey were 
Italians. Many Italian artists were settled in or near Winchester, and the South-England 
great houses dating from Tudor times still show traces of their handiwork. Eminent men 
such as Rovezzano, Torrigiano, Maiano, executed commissions for Wolsey and for other 
English patrons; cp. note regarding Wolsey’s tomb, line 225 below. The ten terra-cotta 
medallions done by Maiano for Wolsey are still at Hampton Court. 

113. Galleryes. This especial feature of Wolsey’s architecture is described in a con- 
temporary Italian letter cited by Law, op. cit. above i:127, as consisting of long porticoes 
with windows on each side, looking on garden or river, the ceilings marvellously wrought, 
etc. It was Wolsey’s habit in inclement weather to walk meditating in his galleries instead 
of in his gardens. 

114. Here is still the Middle English construction it lyked me, where the modern is J 
liked. See Walton A 41, etc. 

115-18. Garden ... arbors. Wolsey’s gardens, at Hampton Court and at York Place, 
were the objects of his most interested attention, and were laid out with great care. A 
walled garden was the fashion of the time, and had long been so; see the Roman de la Rose, 
Froissart’s Paradys d’Amour, Lydgate’s Black Knight, Reson and Sensuality, Churl and 
Bird, etc. No garden was complete without its arbor, set either high upon the mound, in a 
nook in the wall, or behind a thick hedge. In the last case, the hedge was made of trees so 
thickly intertwined with climbing plants that the occupant of the arbor was completely 
screened from observation. See the Pearl 38, Chaucer’s prol. to the Legend 97, the Kingis 
Quair 213, La Belle Dame 191, the Flower and Leaf 49, 64, Hawes’ Pastime 1939, 1962, 
Skelton’s Garland 646, etc. At Hampton Court there were at least two arbors; and Wolsey 
loved to sit in one of these at evening to say his devotions. 

117. knottes, i.e. flowerbeds laid out in fanciful intricate designs. In Cecil’s Hist. of 
Gardening in England, ed. 1910, p. 76, are cuts of some of these knots. Inside the rectangular 
flowerbed an elaborate design in curves was laid out, the lines of which were either formed 
of box, thrift, savory, marjoram, on the general level of the bed, or the pattern was of raised 
earth, held in place by brick, tile, or lead, and artificially colored. This latter practice is 
condemned by Bacon in his essay Of Gardens; and the green knots were far more favored. 
Within the divisions of the pattern thus made the bed was filled with flowers, and green was 
used as border to the whole. Care had to be exercised to keep the knots from growing into 
the filling of the bed; cp. Shakespeare’s Richard II act ii scene 4:46. Knots in a garden are 
mentioned by Hawes, Pastime chap. 18 line 1955, and also in roofs, see note on line 106 above. 

119. pestylent ayers. It was the general medieval belief that disease and pestilence were 
caused and spread by bad air. Many authorities opined that the ultimate cause of the Black 
Death which ravaged Europe in the latter fourteenth century was the inauspicious conjunction 
of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the sign of Aquarius in 1345. There was in consequence, 
said the medical faculty of Paris, a struggle between the sun and the sea in the Orient which 
produced a thick stinking mist; and this mist spread gradually to Europe. Terrific earth- 
quakes in Greece, Cyprus, and Italy in 1348 were accompaniments of this pestilential fog. 
Whoever breathed such an atmosphere suffered a putrid corrupton of the blood in the lungs 
and heart; consequently all who wished to escape infection must purify the air about them, 
and must bleed and purge. The south wind, the bringer of evil from the world’s centre of 
contagion, must be carefully avoided. Fires were to be kept blazing in the house; the leaves 
of the baytree, the juniper, and wormwood, were to be strewn about; the floors were to be 
sprinkled with vinegar, and the hands and face frequently washed with vinegar and water. 
Sanitary measures were also advised for towns; refuse was not to lie in the streets. Lydgate 
in his Troy Book ii:749 ff. enlarges on the sewerage system of New Troy, and describes how 
the gutters were so constantly flushed that no filth could be seen anywhere,—‘Whereby be 
town was outterly assured From engendryng of al corrupcioun, From wikked eyr and from 
infeccioun, bat causen ofte by her violence Mortalite and gret pestilence.” 


530 NOTES [PAGE 373 


A garden was thus not merely an aesthetic delight, but an hygienic precaution, to the 
medieval mind. Hawes, in his Pastime 1924-5, speaks of walking “among the floures of 
aromatic fume The mysty ayre to exyle and consume”. And whenever writers of this period 
allude to morning mists or to the danger of the south wind, it is these theories which are 
at the back of their minds. See note on 125 below. 

120-1. Tapestry was a passion with Wolsey. He purchased scores of sets at a time, 
and Sir Richard Gresham was especially commissioned to obtain in Flanders the many hang- 
ings for Hampton Court. See the comment of Skelton, evidently an eyewitness, in Colin 
Clout 942 ff.; and see Law’s Hist. of Hampton Court Palace i chap. 5. A condensed list of 
the Cardinal’s tapestries, made when his goods were handed over to Henry VIII, is in 
Brewer’s Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, iv:2763 ff. Many of these were of Scriptural 
subjects, but many also of the story of Priam, the Romaunt of the Rose, the Triumphs of 
Petrarch, the Wheel of Fortune, etc. Others were hunting scenes, studies of flowers, trees, 
etc. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made a distinction between ordinary tapestry and 
tapestry a personnages; the latter presented heroes and scenes of history or romance, and 
the weave was full of human figures, often with verses in the bordure and scrolls of 
identification or of speeches on the shoulders or pennons of the principal actors. “Tapestry 
ystoriée” was the term applied to such hangings; see EnglStud 43:10-26 for note on two sets 
of verses composed by Lydgate for this purpose; see also Bycorne and Chichevache, p. 114 here. 

123. clothe of estate, the canopy over the seat of honor. See Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey. 
ed. 1827, p. 113, with its mention of “my lord Cardinal sitting under the cloth of estate”; and 
see also ibid., 117, 195, 211, etc., Skelton’s Garland 484, Paradise Lost x :445-6, 

125. The use of perfumes was not only a luxury but an hygienic precaution in an age 
of the pestilence and “the sweating sickness”. Cavendish says in his Life, ed. 1827, p. 106, that 
whenever the Cardinal was receiving a throng of suitors he moved among them “holding in his 
hand a very fair orange, where the meat or substance within was taken out, and filled up 
again with the part of a sponge, wherein was vinegar, and other confections against the 
pestilent airs”. Perfumes were frequently used in such a “pomaunder”, see note on Skelton’s 
Garland 1007. The musk and ambergris here mentioned as used in the chamber were too 
costly for any but the wealthy; poorer people used bay leaves, etc.; see note on 119 ante. 

127. Plate. There is an “Account of Plate, Gold and Silver, made for Cardinal Wolsey 
from the 9th Year of Henry VIII unto the 19th’,—printed from MS in John Gutch’s 
Collectanea Curiosa, Oxford, 1781, ii:334-344. Cavendish in his Life mentions Wolsey’s 
plate on p. 195. 

133. seruauntes. Fiddes in his Life of Wolsey ed. 1726, p. 100, says that the Cardinal’s 
household numbered 800; Law in his Hampton Court i chap. 7 says 500. Cavendish’s Life, 
ed. 1827, p. 96 ff., enumerates the principal officers. 

134. Crossis twayn. These, and the pillars and pole-axes mentioned in 137-8 below were 
borne before Wolsey on all formal occasions. Cavendish, op. cit., p. 94, says that the crosses 
were carried “whithersoever he went or rode, by two of the most tallest and comeliest priests 
that he could get within all his realm’; and p. 108 he describes Wolsey as riding “upon his 
mule with his crosses, his pillars, his hat, and the great seal, to his barge”. Also, ibid., p. 150, 
Wolsey starts on his embassy to France having “before him his two great crosses of silver, 
two pillars of silver, the great seal of England, his cardinal’s hat, and a gentleman that 
carried his valaunce, otherwise called a cloakbag’’. It is perhaps on this last passage that 
a drawing is based which is incorporated in Stephen Batman’s copy of Cavendish’s Life, in 
MS Douce 363 of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and which is reproduced in both editions 
of Cavendish, at i:87 and 149 respectively. But neither this sixteenth-century picture nor 
Roy’s “Rede Me and Be Nott Wrothe’, a contemporary attack on Wolsey, agrees exactly 
with Cavendish. Roy (see ed. Arber, 1871, p. 56) says that the two crosses are borne first 
by two priests, and that two, laymen bearing the pillars follow, just preceding “my lord on 
his mule”. He continues, “On each syde a pollaxe is borne / Which in none wother use are 
worne. Pretendyng some hid mistery.” Cavendish, of. cit., 105-7, says that Wolsey in going 
to Westminster Hall was preceded by two crosses, by two great silver pillars, and by a mace 


PAGE 373] THE METRICAL VISIONS 531 


of silver gilt, “having about him four footmen with gilt pollaxes in their hand”. The drawing 
shows no pole-axe bearers; Wolsey, rides quite alone, preceded by two crosses, these by the 
two pillar-bearers, and these by the bearers of the Great Seal and of the Cardinal’s hat, all 
mounted. It must however be noted that in this drawing Wolsey is inaccurately represented 
as bearded. Of the two crosses, one is simple, the archiepiscopal or legantine; the other is 
that of a Primate or Patriarch, with two transoms, indicating the double supremacy as a 
Metropolitan and as in authority over other Metropolitans. This double cross, according to 
Rock, Church of Our Fathers (1905) ii:180 ff., “was used in very few places and for a very 
short period”. It existed, says Rock, more in the imagination of painters, as did the Papal 
three-transomed cross entirely. Wolsey’s insistent use of it alongside his archiepiscopal 
cross, and still more his parade of pillars and pole-axes, aroused the irritation of his con- 
temporaries. The former were taken to symbolize his function as a pillar of the Church; 
but the pole-axes were not understood. Skelton in Speke Parrot 510 sneers at both; Roy as 
cited says the pole-axes pretend some hid mystery; Robert Barnes, in his Supplication to 
Henry VIII, recounts his dispute with Wolsey over the extravagance of these costly emblems. 
See Works of Tyndale, Frith, Barnes, Lond., 1573, pp. 214-15, and Cavendish (1827), note 
to pp. 109-111. 

141. legantyn prerogative. Wolsey was in 1516 made the Pope’s legate a latere; see 
note on line 93 above. By virtue of this special power he might convoke all British ecclesi- 
astical courts, and exercise visitatorial powers over all monasteries and colleges. His 
assumption of this office and use of it to raise his authority above that of the king was the 
leading article of the 43 accusations brought against him in Oct. 1529 by the Lords. See 
Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, iv:2712-13, and Fiddes’ Life of Wolsey, ed. 1726, pp. 
172-79. Wolsey’s attorneys pleaded for him that he did not know he was “in contempt” in 
so doing, and he threw himself on the king’s mercy. The bill was dropped, but Wolsey 
accepted the king’s commands as if he had been found guilty. See note on 198. 

143-5. Cavendish makes Wolsey say that when a benefice fell vacant he at once appointed 
his clerk to it to keep it in his jurisdiction, thus preventing, i.e. anticipating, the patron or 
owner of the living in disposing of it. 

148. Note the use of yow as nominative, and cp. 218. 

161. say chek mate. Cp. 1237, 1267. For note see Dance Macabre 459, FaPrinces D 52. 

165. whiles, wiles, schemes. For the orthography cp. whofull 58, whele 1141, whomanly 
1358.—In 1408 wight is written for white. The meaning of 165-182 is that while Wolsey was 
in France in 1527 the infatuation of Henry for Anne Boleyn nullified all his plans. Thus 
Venus, as he says 181, overthrew him, “brought me from above”. 

167-8. These two lines agree closely with Lydgate’s FaPrinces ii :4437-38 :— 


For who with fraude fraudulent is founde 
To a diffraudere fraude will ay rebounde. 


See also Lydgate’s Frog and Mouse fable, last stanza, and the stanza beginning “Deceit 
deceiveth and shal be deceived’, copied separately in Fairfax 16, Harley 7578, Hatton 73 
(flyleaf), Douce 45, Trin. Coll. Camb. R 3, 20, and the Bannatyne MS. Shirley in the 
Trinity MS writes “A Proverb” in the margin; and Lydgate evidently worked up proverbial 
material, with a play upon words which contributed to the popularity of the saying. For this 
latter see the ringing of changes on a wordbase in Dante’s Inferno iv :72-80. 

170. mirror. See notes FaPrinces G 179, Ship of Fools 85. 

177. disdayned (by him) for whom I toke the payn; that is, Henry, for whom Wolsey’s 
efforts were made, disdained and spurned him. 

188. A proverb, and a frequent metaphor with Lydgate, see note on FaPrinces D 69 here. 

190-92. fykkell fortune. A frequent pictorial representation of Fortune, in the latter 
Middle Ages, showed her presiding over a wheel, on the rim of which were human figures 
in different positions. When these figures numbered four, that atop was a crowned and 
exultant king, marked “Regno”; on one side was a figure climbing, marked “Regnabo”; the 
opposite side showed him falling headlong, and was inscribed “Regnavi”; and a prostrate 
body underneath the wheel was lettered “Sum sine regno”. Such a drawing is reproduced in 


532 NOTES [PAGE 374 


Schmeller’s Carmina Burana, Breslau, 1883, p. 1, a different design as frontispiece to vol. i 
of Bergen’s ed. of the FaPrinces, Carnegie Instit., 1923. Early eds. of the FaPrinces, e.g., 
that of 1554, have at the opening of book vi a cut of hundred-handed Fortune ruling a wheel 
crowded with figures; and K. Weinhold, in his monograph Gliicksrad und Lebensrad (Abhandl. 
d. kgl. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1892), describes pictures in MSS of Boethius and of 
Brunetto Latini. Modifications may be seen in drawings by ?Hans Burgkmaier for Petrarch’s 
De remediis utriusque fortunae, Augsburg 1532, reproduced in Hirth’s Les grands illustrateurs 
i:221-2, also in the earliest German editions of the Ship of Fools, etc. The idea of the Wheel 
of Life, more than that of the Wheel of Fortune, is present in the seventeen sculptured 
figures which border the upper half of the great rose-window of the south portal at Amiens, 
and in the twelve figures of St. Etienne de Beauvais’ north transept. 

Whenever the late Middle Ages turned to the theme of fickle Fortune,—and that was 
constantly—some such picture of her and her wheel, whether with four figures or with many, 
was in their minds. That Cavendish so imagined her we can see from this passage, from a 
phrase in his prose Life of Wolsey,—‘‘climbing thus hastily on Fortune’s wheel”,—or from 
lines in his Surrey tragedy, 1109-11 here. We may remember that a tapestry of the Wheel 
of Fortune was in Wolsey’s possession; see note on 120-1 above. It may be added that this 
typically medieval treatment of Fortune and her wheel roots in both Boethius and Dante; 
see the De Consolatione ii prose 2, the Inferno vii:67 ff. On the whole subject see H. R. 
Patch, The Tradition of the Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Philosophy and Literature, North- 
ampton, Mass., 1922. See also description in the Morte Arthure, EETS, 3260-67. 

198. ffayn to avoid, “I was fain to depart”. In 1529 Wolsey was ordered by Henry to 
yield up all his benefices and possessions and retire to Esher, a manor not far from Win- 
chester. Later the Cardinal was directed to remove to his Archbishopric of York, which 
Henry restored him in February 1530; but a few months subsequently he was suddenly 
accused of high treason and ordered to London. On the journey he fell ill, and died at the 
Abbey of Leicester; see line 217. 

200-203. When Henry restored Wolsey to the Archbishopric of York, he returned his 
fallen favorite about three thousand pounds in money, and goods, furniture, etc., of the value 
of £3600 more. See the 1827 Cavendish, appendix, p. 507. Wolsey had been for some time 
quite without funds. 

205. rubbed me on the gall. See Skelton’s Garland 97; but see also ‘“‘rubbyth me on the 
splene”, Visions, p. 34 of the 1827 edition, for the possible meaning “rouse my spleen, stir 
up my gall”. 

207. letters playn. Wolsey appealed privately to the French ambassador to beg King 
Francis’ intercession on his behalf, as in 209-10 below. This appeal was betrayed by the 
Cardinal’s Italian physician to the English Lords in Council, with addition of false details 
likely to arouse Henry’s anger. Wolsey’s enemies saw their opportunity to degrade him yet 
more completely. The arrest was made on November 7, and he died November 29. 

209. caught ... dysdayn. See note on FaPrinces G 22 here. 

215. travellyng to my triall. See note on line 198 above. The phrase here means “travel- 
ing to my trial”; but in line 207 travelled means “‘travailed”. 

222-24. Of this sort of word-manipulation Cavendish is fond. Elsewhere in the Visions 
we read “When lust was lusty, wyll did hyme advaunce To tangle me with lust where my 
lust did requier’, etc. See 1310, 1320 below, 167-8 above. 

225. my Tombe. Wolsey had planned an elaborate mausoleum for himself, the work of 
the Florentine artist Rovezzano, who came to England about 1520. It was not complete at 
the time of Wolsey’s fall, and the king seized it for himself. Rovezzano was called upon for 
an inventory of the material in his hands; and this list is printed by Blomfield in his Hist. of 
Renaissance Architecture in England, i:13. It includes:—4 graven copper pillars; 4 angels 
to kneel at the head and foot of the tomb, ready gilt and burnished; 4 angels with candle- 
sticks to stand on the said pillars; 4 naked children to stand at the head and foot of the tomb 
with the arms; 2 pieces of copper with epitaphs; a tomb of black touchstone 7 feet by 4 feet, 
and 2 1/2 feet high; 4 copper leaves for the corners of the tomb; 12 pieces of black touchstone, 
and 8 of white marble. for the base of the tomb; a step of black touchstone (etc., etc.). The 


PAGE 375] THE METRICAL VISIONS 533 


work was continued by Rovezzano, who used, for Henry’s enlarged plan, more than 2000 
additional pounds of copper; Henry was to have had a recumbent figure of himself, many 
figures of the apostles, etc. The work however was never finished, and although Charles 
the First intended the tomb for himself, Parliament after his execution sold all the bronze 
and copper. In 1806-10 the sarcophagus was used for the burial of Nelson in St. Paul’s. See 
A. Higgins’ paper on the work of Florentine sculptors in England, Archaeol. Journal, Sept. 
1894. 

Henry VIII had previously contracted with Torregiano, in 1519, to make for him and 
Katharine of Arragon a tomb of white marble and black touchstone, one-fourth larger than 
that which the artist had made for Henry VII; it was to be completed in four years under 
Wolsey’s direction. See Brewer’s Letters and Papers iii:2. We may note that the tomb 
ordered by Richard II for Anne was to be made by London masons, and that London copper- 
smiths were to furnish the images for it. See Rymer’s Foedera vii :795-7. 

227. to couche in. See note on Thebes 35. Cp. 244 below. 

232. Hampton Court, etc. This stanza contains a list of Wolsey’s principal residences 
and foundations,—Hampton Court, Westminster Place or York Place (now Whitehall), The 
Moor, ‘“‘Tynnynainger” or Tittenhanger, Cardinal College (now Christ Church College Ox- 
ford), and the Ipswich Grammar School. The last of these was not yet erected at Wolsey’s 
fall, and was re-founded by Elizabeth; it was intended to serve as preparatory school for 
Wolsey’s “Cardinal College’, of which hardly more than the great kitchen was completed 
when Wolsey’s career ended. Henry VIII subsequently re-founded and renamed it. Hampton 
Court and York Place are the best-known of Wolsey’s palaces; Tittenhanger was in Hert- 
fordshire, a manor belonging to the Abbey of St. Albans, which was one of Wolsey’s holdings. 
The Moor was also in Hertfordshire, near Rickmansworth; it was built by an earlier Arch- 
bishop of York, and came into Wolsey’s hands about 1525; he rebuilt the palace. See Robert 
Bayne’s Moor Park, London, 1871. It is Hampton Court with which Wolsey’s name is most 
intimately connected, though little remains of his buildings there, Henry VIII and later 
sovereigns having made extensive changes. Wolsey leased in 1514 about 2000 acres on the 
Thames, and erected a huge brick palace with a frontage of 400 feet, containing nearly a 
thousand rooms. He not only equipped his buildings with an excellent water supply, and 
drained them in the most approved manner, but laid out elaborate gardens (see stanza 17), 
and lavished immense sums on interior decorations and furnishings. There were for instance 
280 guest rooms, with beds of velvet or satin and counterpanes of satin or damask richly 
embroidered; two hundred feather-beds are inventoried in the list of the Cardinal’s posses- 
sions in MS. Brit. Mus. Harley 599, and the expenditure on gold and silver plate represents 
more than seven millions of American money. See note on 127 above; and see Law’s Hamp- 
ton Court as cited, note on 106 above. 

This device of a series of lines beginning alike, “anaphora” or “epanophora’’, is fre- 
quently used in medieval formal poetry. Like all the “colores rhetorici” lightly handled by 
Ovid, still more lightly by Dante, it is overworked by the average medieval writer. Matthew 
of Vendome or Alanus parades all these “exornationes”’; anaphora is a feature of the Pro- 
vengal “enueg”; it appears in the Roman de la Rose (see ed. Méon ii:pp. 13-15, 334-5, 366 
etc.), in Christine de Pisan, Marie de France, Granson, etc.; Chaucer has three notable 
examples of it near the close of his Troilus; Gower employs it, cp. Confessio prol. 935 ff., 
ili :279 ff., v:2469-81; Lydgate, Hawes, Dunbar, Henryson, Douglas, all avail themselves of 
this “color”, as do the romancers. In the Squyr of Lowe Degre 941-954 is a sequence of 
lines beginning “Farewell”, as here; see also stanzas 14 and 15 of the Lament for the Duchess 
of Gloucester (Eleanor Cobham), printed in Wright’s PolitPoems ii:205-8, in Anglia 26 :177-80 
by Fliigel, in the EETS Songs and Carols etc. by R. Dyboski. 

The difference between the tiresome over-emphasis of Hawes in chaps. 21, 31, of the 
Pastime and the sparing use of the device by Keats in Endymion iii:543-6, in Isabella 417-20, 
or by Tennyson in the Holy Grail 473-6, Guinevere 467-72, Enoch Arden 590-92, or in Mere- 
dith’s Love in the Valley 113-116, Sage Enamoured 292-94, is the same difference as exists 
between Dante’s restraint (Inferno v:100-106) in the three successive terzine beginning Amor, 
and the 31 lines beginning Amors, inserted into the Roman de la Rose by a fifteenth-century 


534 NOTES [PAGE 375 


scribe; see Méon’s ed. ii:pp. 19-22. To this latter workman and to Hawes, as to Lydgate, 
quantity produced effect. 

242. The allusion probably is to the Dance Macabre or Dance of Death. In Cavendish’s 
time Lydgate’s verses and the accompanying paintings were still in the churchyard of St. 
Paul’s Cathedral. See the text here, p. 124. 

246-54. With the change of meyne to chapleyns in 249, this stanza is taken complete from 
" Lydgate’s FaPrinces iii:3760 ff. Cp. line 101 above with 246 here. 

247. shettes of raynes, “sheets of Rennes”. A fine linen was made at Rennes in Brittany; 
see Chaucer’s BoDuchesse 255, see the Squyr of Lowe Degre, 842, see Skelton’s Colyn Clout 
316 and Magnyfycence 2042. 

249. vicious chapleyns. Wolsey’s chaplain Dr. John Allen, according to Fiddes’ life of 
the Cardinal, p. 372, rode in a kind of perpetual progress from one religious house to another, 
drawing from them large sums for his master’s use. This was at last so bitterly complained 
of that the king compelled Wolsey to promise to offend no more in such manner. On p. 205 
Fiddes says “That whereby the Cardinal seemeth to have given the greatest and most general 
disgust was his erecting the Legate’s court and employing a person as judge in it, charged 
with much rapine and extortion,”—this person being the chaplain Allen. See note on 141. 

254-58, 264. Cavendish was proud of his fidelity to Wolsey. 

269. This is the method of the Fall of Princes, even more of Boccaccio’s De Casibus 
its ultimate original, where inserted and generalized groups break the succession of individual 
laments. Of the personages intervening between Wolsey and Surrey in this poem, the vis- 
count Rochford, brother to Anne Boleyn, and the grooms of Henry’s chamber Norris, Weston, 
Brereton, and Smeaton, were all accused with Anne of adultery, and all executed. Cavendish 
gives from three to seven stanzas to each of the lesser men, and sixteen to Anne Boleyn, 
who follows in the list. Next comes a group of minor figures accused of rebellion and murder 
in Henry’s reign and executed by him; then Cromwell earl of Essex, who had been one of 
Cavendish’s fellow-servants in Wolsey’s household, who rose to the chancellorship after 
Wolsey’s death and More’s resignation, and went to the scaffold a bare two months after he 
was made earl. Next come the lords Exeter and Montagu, beheaded for treason; Queen 
Katharine Howard and the king’s page Culpepper; the viscountess Rochford; the countess of 
Salisbury; the earl of Surrey. 

1105 ff. Henry Howard earl of Surrey, lyric poet and blank-verse translator of the 
Aeneid, was beheaded by Henry VIII a very short time before the king’s own death in 1547. 
Henry was then mortally ill, and filled with anxiety for the future of his son; and the enemies 
of the Howards persuaded the king that Surrey and his aged father the duke of Norfolk 
aspired to make themselves guardians of the boy Edward and to rule through him and the 
princess Mary. Of the frivolous pretexts upon which Surrey was sentenced, Cavendish seems 
to have known only the flimsiest, the charge that Surrey, by quartering upon his shield the 
arms of Edward the Confessor, had committed an act of high treason. To this line 1195 
doubtless alludes. Surrey went to the block, but the death of Henry saved his father after 
the warrant had actually been made out. The old duke remained a prisoner in the Tower for 
seven years, and died immediately after liberation and restoration to his honors, aged 83. See 
note on 1121 below. 

1109. whele (1) made lyke to clyme. See note on 190-92 above. 

1121. actes marsheall, martial deeds. Norfolk was captain of the English vanguard 
when his father, Thomas Howard second duke, won the battle of Flodden Field in 1513 over 
the Scots. He was at various times lieutenant-general of forces sent abroad, lord lieutenant 
of Ireland, and warden of the Scottish marches. See Barclay, écl. iv:850, 853, notes. 

1130. Brewtus Cassius. See note on FaPrinces E 63 here. 

1133 ff. This stanza is very Lydgatian in its confused verb-management. 

1137. dothe expresse. The convenience of this verb for rime with abstract terms in 
-nesse made its use exceedingly common in Lydgate and in later formal writers of the period,— 
Bokenam, Capgrave, Bradshaw, Barclay. It does not appear in the reflexive construction, but 
dothe expresse, did expresse, are freely used, especially by Lydgate. See note on FaPrinces 
A 303 here. 


PAGE 376] THE METRICAL VISIONS 535 


1149. deprave. This transitive use of the verb occurs in Lydgate, cp. FaPrinces A 447 
here; it is more frequent in Hawes. 

1151 is a short line. 

1155. Singer puts a semicolon after Jyve, thus wrecking the sense. See 1314, 1356. 

1157. hath byn dekayed, have been overthrown, have fallen from high estate. This use 
of the verb decay appears in the sixteenth century, and is frequent in Spenser. 

1164-1174. This passage says that the qualities which had raised low-born men to high. 
rank were accounted dangerous in men already high-born like Surrey, who met only disdain 
from “suche” (men) as were vain and idle. 

1177. myrror. See note on Barclay’s Ship of Fools 85. 

1182. Singer substitutes shame for chaunce in the middle of the line. 

1184. more rather. The double comparative and double superlative are frequent in 
Cavendish. 

1186. lost my pate. Until after the seventeenth century, says the NED, the word pate 
had not its present ridiculous connotation. See Beryn, prol. 139. 

1188. Take a vowe. This seems to mean ‘‘Take my assurance”. It is thus not the same 
locution as “make avowe”, e.g., in Barclay’s fourth eclogue 438, 726. 

1193. The scribe inserts wt sorowe, with a caret. 

1217. Cavendish more than once made an end of his Visions, and again took them up. 
At the close of the Wolsey tragedy he wrote Finis; here he says that after finishing the 
lines on Surrey he intended to stop; after the epitaph of Henry VIII he writes Finis G. C., 
and just before the stanzas on the death of Edward VI another Finis stands in the manuscript. 
At the end of Queen Mary’s epitaph is “Fiat. Fiat. Finis’. This is followed by the author’s 
address to his book and by the colophon, which, as remarked in the introduction here, sets 
a date for completion five months anterior to the death of Mary. The piecemeal composition 
of the Visions is obvious. 

1220. “As if one were in a brake, like one who is in a brake.”’ The word brake in late 
Middle English meant a cage, snare, dilemma; the first case NED is from Skelton’s Elynour 
Rummyng 325. 

1222. trembling trompe, i.e, trumpet which causes trembling. See timorous blast in 
Skelton’s Garland 260, and note ibid. For the use of a loud sound to waken a sleeper or turn 
a narrative cp. Hawes 93 note. For Fame’s trump blown at the death of a champion see 
Hawes 136 and note. 

1237. chekmate. See note on 161 above—pfluk them by the berd. A mark of contempt. 
See, e.g., the romance of Sir Degrevaunt 835-6,—“I shal schak hym by the berd pe nexte 
tyme we mete”. To meet an opponent “in the beard” was to face him, e.g., in combat; see 
Troilus iv:41, Lydgate’s Troy Book ii:6283, i11:1203, and often. To “make a man’s beard” 
was to deceive him. See WBprol. 361, Beryn 436, 485, 622. 

1241. The device of a sleep for changing scene in narrative is more than common in 
medieval formal verse. 

1245. by & bye, immediately. The phrase also means “in sequence”, see Morley 209 
and note. 

1246. Henry VIII died at Whitehall, the palace he took from Wolsey; Whitehall is in 
Westminster. 

1251. bedropped face, face dripping with tears. Cp. “so dropping was her wede”’, Flower 
and Leaf 371. The NED has no case of bedropped between Gower’s Confessio vii:4832 and 
Paradise Lost x :527. 

1259 ff. The three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, are present at Henry’s death-bed, 
drawing and cutting the thread of his life. 

1261. as poettes dothe. The use of the verb in -th with a plural subject may be dialectal, 
a survival of the old Southwestern plural; or it may be an extension of that use of a singular 
verb with plural subject which has always been sporadic in English,—influenced sometimes in 
this latter case by the feeling that a collective subject has singular force. See line 1366 below, 
also lines 1174, 1327-8, 1394; see the Lover’s Mass 127, Libel of Eng. Policy 389, 510, Hawes’ 
Pastime 206. There are several cases in Walton’s Boethius; see A 105 and note. 


536 NOTES [PAGE 379 


1283. throme, thrum, the part of the warp unwoven, at the sides of the finished web. 

1288. vigor. Perhaps read rigor? 

1293. Compare Antigone 1030, ris dAxy Tov Oavovr’ émixravetv, “what valor to slay the slain?” 

1302-4. Note the rime. 

1309-10. For the word-play see 222 and note; cp. 1320-22. 

1314. Singer puts a period at the end of this line, as in 1356, although in both cases there 
is syntactical connection with the next stanza. See note on 1155. 

1315 ff. This extremely outspoken language regarding Henry VIII made the publication 
of the Visions even more impossible than that of the Life of Wolsey. Cavendish was a strong 
Roman Catholic, and rejoiced at the accession of Mary; but his opinions about her father 
were none the less too dangerous for publication. 

1348. bridelled. This metaphor is very common in Lydgate; see Epithal. for Gloucester 88 
and note; see his Thebes 2704-5, Troy Book prol. 6, i11:6628, v:1369, etc. For the conjunction 
of Reason and Sensuality (“blood and judgment”) see e.g. FaPrinces i:6200, 6257, ii :579-80, 
2535-6, etc. 

1355-56. Note the rime. 

1368. Singer omitted this line. 

1369. Greseld. At the very time of Cavendish’s completion of this set of poems, June 
1558, there appeared a poem on Katharine of Arragon by William Forrest, chaplain to Queen 
Mary, entitled Grisild the Second. See the edition for the Roxburghe Club, 1875, by Macray. 
From the Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary, ed. Madden, 1831, we see that in 
1523, when the scholar Ludovico Vives drew up a scheme of education for Katharine’s use 
in training her daughter, he included, as one of the few fictions permitted, “Gresilda vulgata 
jam fabula”. 

1371. inconvenyence. This word had for Lydgate or for Cavendish much more force 
than for us. In this stronger sense it is frequent in Barclay; see note Ship of Fools 142. 

1378-80. Observe the identical rime. 

1379. bankettyng chere. The same phrase is used by Holinshed in his Scottish Chronicle, 
according to the NED. 

1385 ff. See latter part of note on 232 ante. 

1400. pieuselles, pucelles, maidens. Singer prints prensells. 

1406. Impe, scion, especially of a noble house. The first case given by NED in this 
sense is from Hoccleve’s De Regimine Principum 5442; the word is used by Hall in his 1548 
Chronicle, also of Prince Edward. 

Epytaphe. Singer, in a note on this epitaph, refers to the Coplas of Jorge Manrique on 
his father’s death, written in Spain in the mid-fifteenth century. He reprints the part in 
question, which is here given :— 


En ventura Octaviano Antonio Pio en clemencia 
Julio Cesar en vencer Marco Fabio en igualdad 
Y batallar Del semblante 

En la virtud Africano Adriano en eloquencia 
Hanibal en el saber Theodosio en humildad 
Y trabajar Y buen talante 

En la bondad un Trajano Aurelio Alessandro fue 
Tito en liberalidad En diciplina y rigor 

Con alegria De la guerra 

En sus brazos un Troyano Un Constantino en la fe 
Marco Tulio en la verdad Y Camilo en el amor 
Que prometia De su tierra 


The use of a list of great ancient names, when praising a contemporary, is so frequent 
with medieval rhetoricians that I point out no kinship here other than that of descent from 
a common ancestor or stock. Compare Lydgate’s procedure in his poem on the Coronation 
of Henry VI (printed by Wright, PolitPoems ii:141), where Solomon, David, Samson, 
Joshua, Judas Maccabaeus, Alexander, Julius Caesar, “Brutus Cassius”, Hector, Fabricius, 


PAGE 382] THE METRICAL VISIONS 537 


Zenocrates, Scipio, Titus, Trajan, Tiberius, Gratian, Justinian, Octavian, Constantine, and 
the pious emperor Sigismund, the betrayer of Huss, are marshalled as examples of the virtues. 
The list includes most of the Nine Worthies (see note on Epithal. 134 here), but the additions 
are in several cases interesting; ‘‘Brutus Cassius” is praised for foresight, Tiberius for 
“fredam and gentilesse”. 

The change of metrical form, when narrative gives way to lyric, is to be expected even 
in the Transition; and Cavendish does not imitate the Spanish stanza. But the possibility 
that he knew of the poem is not excluded; see introduction to the Lover’s Mass, p. 209 here, 
and consider his possible meeting with servants of Katharine of Arragon. 

The Historia Trojana of Guido delle Colonne, ed. of 1486, has after the close of its 
text the epitaphs of Hector and of Achilles. 

The Epitaph is followed, in Cavendish’s work, by two stanzas of author’s comment, 
which rebegin the series after the “Finis” below the Epitaph. There follow :—Seymour, 
Somerset, Arundel, Stanhope, Vane, and Partridge, then another “Finis”; the re-opening is 
“Lauctor in Mortem Edwardi VI”; and after this ensues a praise of Queen Mary. The 
tragedies of Northumberland, of Suffolk, and of Lady Jane Grey follow, and next is an 
“Epitaphe on the Late Quene Marie”, beneath which is “Fiat. Fiat, Finis’. Six stanzas of 
author’s address to his book follow, and the colophon. 


LORD MORLEY’S TRANSLATION OF PETRARCH’S TRIUMPH OF LOVE 


DEDICATORY LETTER 


Robyn Hoode. Cp. Barclay’s scorn, Ship of Fools 13874-8.—swete sonnct. Petrarch’s 
sonnets were often included in the MSS of his Trionfi.—story all, i.e., storiall, “historical”.— 
ryme. Morley undoubtedly means that he cannot manage the terza rima scheme. 


THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE, BOOK I 


1. In the tyme, etc. Petrarch begins “Al tempo che rinova i miei sospiri’, etc. He is 
dating his poem on April 6, the anniversary of his first meeting with Madonna Laura; and 
in verse 8 of the Italian he.imagines himself “al chiuso loco”, i.e., Vaucluse, his country home, 
and the scene of that meeting. This latter allusion escapes Morley, unless his ‘““myne eyen 
closed” in line 11 is an erroneous attempt at it. Petrarch’s choice of dawn as the time of his 
vision was to the medieval reader assurance of its truth. See Albertus Magnus De Somno; 
see Ovid’s Heroides 19 :195-6,— 


Namque sub Aurora, jam dormitante lucerna, 
Somnia quo cerni tempore vera solent. 


See Dante’s Inferno 26 :7,—‘‘Ma se presso al mattin del ver si sogna’’. 

7. Tytans chylde, etc. Petrarch’s “fanciulla di Titone” refers to Aurora, either as bride 
of Tithonus or as daughter of the Titan Hyperion. According to Skeat, Chaucer has con- 
fused Titan and Tithonus in Troilus ii1:1464; one of the Troilus MSS, Harley 2392, has there 
a side-note, “Aurora: amica solis’. Lydgate at the opening of Troy Book iii makes Phoebus 
the husband of Aurora. In the attempt to secure a rime to place, the “soggiorno” of the 
Italian, Morley has translated gelata by the phrase applied to Saturn in Lydgate’s Thebes 
prologue line 3. 

16. This line is padding for rime; cp. also 18, 38, 39, half-lines 41 and 42, 44, 48, 49, 54, 
63, 78, 89, 116, 124, 126, 130, 132, 135, 137-8, 140, 154, 156, 168, 174, 198, 202, 217-18, 232, 
236, 245. 

28-32 have no parallel in the Italian. 32 is apparently twisted from Petrarch’s 21, but line 
20 of the Italian, “levando gli occhi gravi e stanchi”’, is omitted. Mrs. Hume renders,—‘And 
having raised mine eyes, which wearied were, To understand this sight was all my care”. 

43. Read this line with period at close—all the rest means all the rest of Cupid’s body. 

45. Petrarch does not say that any were lying on the ground. 

50-54. Mrs. Hume’s fairly accurate version is:—“Glad to learn news I rose, and for- 
ward pressed So far, that I was one amongst the rest; As if I had been kill’d with loving 
pain Before my time”, etc. 


538 NOTES [PAGE 388 


62. Petrarch describes the king as he who is thirsty of tears, “sempre di lagrime digiuno” ; 
Morley blurs this into a medieval formula. 

65. more sadde. Petrarch says “less sad’. 

68. fame is dragged in for rime. What Petrarch says is:—“This is what comes of 
loving.” 

72-4 are taken from the newcomer’s speech by Morley, and given to the dreamer, 

100. then. Petrarch says that now, i.e., later, those words are recorded in his memory. 

103 is a mistranslation. What Petrarch says is:—‘‘And because of my forward youth, 
which makes mind and tongue bold and hardy, I asked him” etc. 

115. Read capteyn. 

116 is weakened. It is in the Italian:—“who thus deprives (men) of life and liberty”. 

135-8 are added by Morley. 

150. By request. Augustus compelled the husband of Livia to divorce her, B.c. 38, in 
order that he himself might marry her. She was at the time pregnant, and one at least of 
the early prints, that of Venice 1519, reads pregnante here instead of pregando. Morley had 
pregando before him, and his By request is a softening, though less so than his rendition of 
Petrarch’s tolse, “seized”, as obtayne. 

161. Denyse, etc. The elder Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, was intensely suspicious, and 
similar but less extravagant tales are related of Alexander. Morley follows Petrarch in 
mentioning only the “paura e sospetto” of the two sovereigns; but like Petrarch he includes 
them among those conquered by love. Lydgate in his FaPrinces iv:799 ff. treats at length of 
Dionysius’ unbridled cruel lust, saying nothing of his suspicion. 

162. sclaunder. Petrarch says “temer”, i.e., fear. 

163-7. These lines allude to Aeneas, whose wife Creusa was separated from him during 
the flight from Troy. He mourned for her at the foot of Mt. Ida, near the Greek colony 
of Antander; and later, in Italy, he wedded Lavinia the betrothed of Turnus. Turnus also 
is not directly named, but identified as the slayer of Evander’s son. Petrarch was driven to 
this circumlocution by his use of Alexandro in rime; and Morley follows him. 

170. one. Hippolytus son of Theseus. Not named by Petrarch for several lines. 

178-9. Petrarch here says, in one of the two main recensions of his text, that Phaedra’s 
death was “vendetta” for Hippolytus, Theseus, and Ariadne whom Theseus had earlier 
deceived. When Morley uses the phrase them two, he seems to follow the other main recen- 
sion, however. In 179 the printed edition reads the sens instead of Theseus. 

180-87 expand two lines of Petrarch. 

187-8. Note the rime indicating a silent / in false. See note on Garland 112. 

189 ff. Theseus is meant, between the sisters Ariadne and Phaedra. He carried off both 
from Crete after the slaying of the Minotaur, and on the voyage deserted Ariadne for 
Phaedra. He did not slay either, as Morley asserts in 191. Petrarch says that Theseus 
stands “fra due sorelle morte”, and then makes the rhetorical antithesis, in the next line, that 
“the one rested her joy in him, he rested his joy in the other”. Morley runs the word morte, 
a plural, into connection with the following “L’una di lui’, and says that the one was slain 
by Theseus. The antithesis he spoils. 

194 ff. A list of lovers follows:—Hercules, Achilles and Polyxena, Demophoon and 
Phyllis, Jason, Medea, and Hypsipyle; then unnamed at first, are Paris and Helen, then 
Oénone. Next are Menelaus, Hermione and Orestes, Laodomia and Prothesilaus, Argia and 
Polynices. This is the standard list. Chaucer in the (unfinished) Legend of Good Women 
included Hypsipyle, Ariadne, and Phyllis; and in the introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale 
he mentions all these women but Polyxena, Helen, Oenone, and Argia. Lydgate in his 
Thebes has the story of Argia and Polynices, in his Troy Book those of Polyxena and of 
Helen. These latter two are often named in his lists of fair ladies; see the Dance Macabre 
451-2, the Flower of Courtesy 190-1, and the entire list in the latter poem. 

205-6 do not follow the Italian. Petrarch says at this point, of Medea, that “even as 
she was cruel to her old father and to her youthful brother, so much had she reason to curse 
her own lot”. 


PAGE 390] PETRARCH-TRANSLATION 539 


209. in ordre by and by, arranged one after the other. For “by and by” cp. AssGods 302, 
“Next to Cupido in ordre by and by”, and very many cases in Lydgate. For the phrase “by 
ordre” see note on Hoccleve’s third Roundel, p 405 here. 

210-12. The pronouns are all of the wrong gender. It is Helen who “hath the name of 
bewtye’”’; Morley’s omission of ‘‘pastor” to identify Paris increases the vagueness. 

213. innumerable of harmes, the Trojan War. Petrarch says “gran tempeste”. 

214 is a clumsy makeshift for rime. 

229-30. Here Morley’s error drives him to absurdity. What Petrarch says is “Hear the 
cries which the spirits address to him who thus leads them”. In one of the main types of 
Italian text the verb for “address” is diero, in the other rendero. Apparently Morley had 
the latter before him; and having translated it render, he drags in the word slender for rime. 

235. Morley omits the “shadowy myrtles” which Petrarch borrows from Aeneid vi :443-4; 
he has instead “a greate and darke presse”. 

241-2. Apollo, etc. The reference is probably to Apollo’s love for the two Thessalian 
sisters Daphne and Cyrene, daughters of the river-god Peneus. 

246. Uarro. M. Terentius Varro, a voluminous author of the first century B. c., wrote 
forty-one books “Antiquitatum rerum humanarum et divinarum”, of which fragments are 
preserved by citation in the writings of the Church Fathers Augustine, Tertullian, and Lac- 
tantius. In that work Varro made an elaborate classification of the Greek and Roman deities. 
According to Sandys ii:13, Boccaccio was the first humanist to quote Varro, and may have 
been the discoverer of the archetypal manuscript. 


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SELECT REFERENCE LIST 
(See also separate Reference Lists s.v. in Glossary.) 


Adds., applied to a manuscript, indicates one of the “Additionals” sub-collection of 
the British Museum. 

Ad Herennium. A rhetorical treatise long ascribed to Cicero ; ed. by Marx, Leipzig, 
1894, 

Alanus. Alanus de Insulis or Alain de Lille, a twelfth century rhetorical writer, in 
Latin. Works ed. in Migne’s Patrologia Latina, vol. 210; his Anticlaudianus 
is ed. by Thomas Wright in Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Cen- 
tury, ii: 268 ff.; his De Planctu Naturae, ibid., 429 ff. The latter work is 
translated into English by D. M. Moffatt, N. Y., 1908. On Alanus see H. O. 
Taylor, The Medieval Mind, London, 1911, vol. ii. 

Albon or St. Albon. Lydgate’s metrical life of Saints Albon and Amphabell, ed. 
Horstmann, Berlin, 1882. 

Allegory. See under Virgil. 

Anglia. Zeitschrift fir englische Philologie, Halle, 1878 ff. quarterly. Anglia 
Beiblatt, containing reviews, 1890 ff. 

Anticlaudianus. See under Alanus. 

Archiv. Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, 1846 ff. 

Arundel. A sub-collection of MSS in the British Museum. 

Ashmole. A sub-collection of MSS in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.—Elias Ash- 
mole’s Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, a collection of treatises on alchemy, 
London, 1652. 

AssGods. The Assembly of Gods, a poem formerly ascribed to Lydgate, and ed. 
as his for the EETS in 1895 by O. L. Triggs. See my Chaucer Manual, 
p. 407. 

AssLadies. The Assembly of Ladies, a poem of unknown authorship, printed by 
Skeat in Chaucerian and Other Pieces, pp. 380 ff. See my Chaucer Manual, 
p. 408. 


Barclay. See pp. 295 ff. here. Barclay’s Ship of Fools is ed. Jamieson, 2 vols., 
Edinburgh, 1874. 

Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Of the thirteenth century; was author of the encyclo- 
pedia De Proprietatibus Rerum, Englished by Trevisa in 1398; no modern 
edition. “Gleanings” from it, translated, constitute R. Steele’s Mediaeval 
Lore, London, 1893. See Voigt in Engl. Stud. 41 : 337-9. 

Bedford. Hoccleve’s poem to the duke of Bedford, p. 76 here. 

Berdan. Early Tudor Poetry, 1485-1547, by John M. Berdan, N. Y., 1920. 

Bergen, Henry. Editor of Lydgate’s Troy Book for the EETS, 1906, 1908, and 
of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes for the Carnegie Institution of America, 1923, 
1927. 

Beryn. A supplementary Canterbury tale, of unknown authorship. Unique copy 
in the Northumberland MS of the Canterbury Tales, ed. for the Chaucer 
Society 1876. 

Bibl.nat. The Bibliotheque nationale at Paris. 

Bibl.nat.fonds francais. The “fonds francais” MSS, or French section of the MS- 
collection in the Bibliothéque nationale. 


[ 540 ] 


REFERENCE LIST 541 


BlKnight. Lydgate’s poem The Complaint of the Black Knight. Edited by 
Krausser in Anglia 19: 211 ff., and by Skeat in Chaucerian and Other Pieces. 
See my Chaucer Manual, p. 413. 

Boccaccio. The Opere Volgari were edited by Moutier, Florence, 1827-34, 17 vols. 
Several poems are separately ed. in the Biblioteca Romanica, notably II Filos- 
trato; and of this poem there is a stanzaic translation by H. M. Cummings, 
Princeton, 1924. Editions of the Decameron are very numerous. None of 
the three Latin works is accessible in a modern edition; they are: De Casibus 
Virorum Illustrium, De Claris Mulieribus, and De Genealogia Deorum. The 
first-named is the ultimate source of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, see p. 151 
here; of the second Skelton makes some use in his Garland of Laurel, see p. 
518 here; and the third is often mentioned in these Notes. On Boccaccio’s 
Latin works see Hortis, Opere latine del Boccaccio, Trieste, 1879; on the 
relation of the De Casibus to Lydgate see vol. iv of Bergen’s ed. of the Fall 
of Princes, introd., and also Koeppel as p. 151 foot, here. 

Bodl. The Bodleian Library at Oxford—One of the “Bodley” sub-collection of 
MSS there. 

BoDuch. Chaucer’s Boke of the Duchesse. 

Boethius. See pp. 39 ff., p. 185. 

Bokenam. Osbern Bokenam, author of a fifteenth-century collection of saints’ 
lives, ed. Horstmann, Heilbronn, 1883. 

Brown’s Register. A Register of Middle English Religious and Didactic Verse, 
ed. Carleton Brown, Oxford, 1916, 2 vols. 

Bradshaw, Henry, (died 1513). Author of a verse-life of St. Werburge, ed. by 
Horstmann for the EETS, 1887. 

Bradshaw, Henry. Librarian of the University Library, Cambridge, England, 
1867-86. See my Chaucer Manual, p. 520. 

Brit.Mus. The British Museum, London. 

Brusendorff. Author of The Chaucer Tradition, Copenhagen and Oxford, 1926. 

Burgh. Burgh’s Letter to Lydgate, see pp. 188 ff. here. 

Bycorne. Lydgate’s Bycorne and Chichevache, see pp. 113 ff. here. 


Calig. The mark of a MS in the Cottonian collection of the British Museum, and 
from the case of that collection bearing the bust of Caligula. See my Chaucer 
Manual, p. 511. 

CambrHEL. The Cambridge History of English Literature, Cambridge, 1907 ff. 

CantTales. The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer. 

CanYeoTale. Chaucer’s Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, from the Canterbury Tales. 

Capgrave. John Capgrave, eminent Churchman of the fifteenth century, author 
among other of a life of St. Katherine. See under Gloucester. 

Carmina Burana. A collection of vigorous Latin verse of the Middle Ages, ed. by 
Schmeller, 1883. 

To Carpenter. Poem by Hoccleve, printed p. 67 here. 

Cavend. The Metrical Visions of George Cavendish, see pp. 368 ff. here. 

Caxton. See Gen. Introd. pp. 9, 35; see p. 88. 

Chaucer Manual. Chaucer, a Bibliographical Manual, by E. P. Hammond, N. Y., 
1908. Supplement to appear. 

Chaucer, Praise of. Extracts from Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes, see p. 74 
here. 


542 ABBREVIATIONS 


Chaucer Society. For publications see my Manual, pp. 523 ff. 

Chrétien de Troyes, of the twelfth century. Author among other of the romance 
of Yvain, cited Gen. Introd. p. 31, 32. The Works are ed. by Foerster, 4 
vols., Halle 1884-99, 

Christine de Pisan, died ca. 1430. Oecuvres poétiques are ed. by Roy for SATF., 
3 vols., 1886-96. Her Chemin de Long Estude is ed. R. Piischel, Berlin, 1881. 
Her Epistle of Othea to Hector was transl. by Stephen Scrope and ed. by 
Warner for the Roxburghe Club, 1904. Many other works, some inedited. 

Churl. Lydgate’s Churl and Bird; see p. 102 here. 

ClTale. The Clerk’s Tale, from the Canterbury Tales. 

Compl. to his Lady. A Complaint to his Lady, a poem printed with the work of 
Chaucer by Skeat, i: 360. See my Chaucer Manual, p. 411. 

Confessio. Gower’s Confessio Amantis, ed. with the other works of Gower by 
G. C. Macaulay, Oxford 1899, 4 vols.; also EETS. 

Copland. . Robert Copland, printer and editor, also writer; see p. 287 here. 

CourtLove. The Court of Love, an anonymous poem ed. Skeat vii:409. See my 
Chaucer Manual, p. 418. 

CourtSap. The Court of Sapience, a poem ascribed to Lydgate by Hawes. Ed. 
by Spindler, Leipzig, 1927. Extracts pp. 258 ff. here. 

CT. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. CT prol., the General Prologue to the Tales. 

Cuckoo. The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, a poem ed. Skeat vii:347. See my 
Chaucer Manual, p. 420. 


Dance. Lydgate’s Dance Macabre, printed pp. 124 ff. here. French text of the 
poem, pp. 427 ff. 

Deguilleville, Guillaume de, of the fourteenth century. Author of a three-part 
Pilgrimage :—the Pélerinage de la Vie Humaine, the Pelerinage de l’Ame, the 
Pélerinage de Jésu Christ. The first of these was Englished, verse, by Lyd- 
gate ; see my Chaucer Manual, p. 76. 

De Planctu Naturae. See under Alanus ante. 

Deschamps, Eustace. French contemporary of Chaucer, died ca. 1406. His works 
are ed., in 11 vols., for the SATF., 1878-1903. See my Chaucer Manual, 
Dasa 

Dial. Hoccleve’s Dialogue with a Friend : extract printed here p. 69 ff. 

Dibdin. Typographical Antiquities, London, 1810-19, 4 vols. Antiquated but 
still useful. For works supplementing it see Handlists, and see Blades on 
Caxton. 

diss., dissertation. 

DNB or Dict Nat Biog. The British Dictionary of National Biography, with its 
supplements. Living personages not included. See pp. 98, 419 here. 

DoctTale. The Doctor’s Tale, from the Canterbury Tales. 

Donatus. See under Grammarians. 

Douglas, Gavin. Scottish poet, died 1522. Bishop of Dunkeld, translator of the 
Aeneid. Works edited for the STS by Small, 4 vols., Edinburgh, 1874. 

Du Cange. Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, 1678. Edited by Henschel, 
10 vols., 1882-88. Antiquated but still useful. 

Dunbar, William. Scottish poet, died ca. 1520. Poems edited for the STS by 
Small, Mackay, and Gregor, 1888-93; ed. in one volume by H. B. Baildon, 
Cambr. Univ. Press, 1907. 


REFERENCE LIST 543 


DuorMerc or DuobMercat. Lydgate’s Fabula Duorum Mercatorum, ed. Zupitza- 
Schleich, Strassburg, 1897. 

Dyce. The Poetical Works of John Skelton, with notes, by the Rev. Alexander 
Dyce, 2 vols., London, 1843. 


Ecl.,Ecl.prol. Barclay’s Fourth Eclogue, pp. 312 ff. here and his prologue, ibid. 

Education. In the Universities, see Rashdall’s Universities of Europe in the 
Middle Ages, 2 vols., Oxford, 1895; see H. Parker in English Historical 
Review, vol. 5 (1890) ; see Abelson’s Seven Liberal Arts, Columbia Univ., 
1906. In the schools, see Leach’s Schools of Medieval England, London, 
1915; see Foster Watson’s English Grammar Schools to 1660, Cambridge, 
1908. In the Inns of Court, see the bit in Fortescue’s De Laudibus Legum 
Angliae, and see the chapter on Chaucer’s Education in Manly’s New Light 
on Chaucer, N. Y., 1926. See the chapter on Education in vol. ii of the 
Cambridge Hist. Eng. Literature; and Seebohm’s Oxford Reformers for a 
study of Colet and his school at St. Paul’s. 

EEPopPo. Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 
4 vols., London, 1864-66. 

EETS. The Early English Text Society, founded 1864 and still active. 

Egerton. The mark of a MS-subcollection in the British Museum. 

Ellesmere. The mark of a MS owned by the Earl of Ellesmere. The noble copy 
of the Canterbury Tales once owned by Lord Ellesmere has passed to the 
Huntington collection in California; and the copy of poems by Lydgate, etc., 
formerly marked Ellesmere 26 A 13, is also now of that library, but retaining 
the early mark.—See refs., p. 58 here. 

EncyclBrit. The Encyclopedia Britannica. 

EnglStud. Englische Studien, Heidelberg, 1877 ff., quarterly. 

Epithal. Lydgate’s Epithalamium for Gloucester, printed pp. 142 ff. here. 


Fairfax. The mark of a small sub-collection of MSS in the Bodleian Library at 
Oxford. For the most important, no. 16, see my Chaucer Manual, p. 333 ff. 

Fall, FaPrin. Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, ed. Bergen 1923-27, 4 vols. Extracts pp. 
150 ff. here. 

Faral. Editor of Les arts poétiques du xii et du xiii siécle, Paris, 1924. Texts, 
with introductions, of the more important Latin rhetoricians in that period ; 
includes Matthew of Venddme’s Ars Versificatoria, Gaufrid de Vinsauf’s 
Poetria Nova and his De Arte Versificandi, Evrard |’Allemand’s Laborintus. 
Supersedes Leyser as below, and supplements the collection of Mari, I Tratti 
Medievali di Ritmica Latina, Milan, 1899, also that of Langlois, Recueil d’arts 
de séconde Rhétorique, Paris, 1902. On the general subject see also Norden, 
Die antike Kunstprosa vom vi Jahrhundert vor Christo bis in die Zeit der 
Renaissance, Leipzig, 1898, 2 vols. See under Rhetoric below. 

On Faral see Sedgwick in Speculum ii: 331-342. 

Filigranes. See collection ed. by C. M. Briquet, 4 vols., Paris, 1907. 

Fitzwilliam MS of Palladius. See p. 202 here. 

FlandLeaf. The anonymous poem, The Flower and the Leaf, ed. Skeat in 
Chaucerian and Other Pieces, pp. 361 ff. See my Chaucer Manual, p. 423. 

FlCourt. The Flower of Courtesy, a poem presumably by Lydgate. Text in 
Skeat as just cited, p. 266; see my Chaucer Manual, p. 424. 


544 ABBREVIATIONS 


Flugel, Ewald, died 1914. Co-editor of Anglia, where are printed many articles 
by him. Editor of a Neuenglisches Lesebuch, Halle, 1895, vol. i only 
published. 

FranklTale. The Franklin’s Tale, from the Canterbury Tales. 

Fulgentius, died 533 a.p. Works, ed. by Helm, Leipzig, 1898, include a Myth- 
ologicon much read in the Middle Ages, also an allegorical interpretation of 
Virgil. 

Furnivall. Frederick James Furnivall, died 1910, founder and indefatigable edi- 
tor for the Ballad Society, the Chaucer Society, the Early English Text 
Society, etc. See my Chaucer Manual, p. 522. 


Gamelyn. The Tale of Gamelyn, found in many MSS of the Canterbury Tales. 
Edited by Skeat, Oxford, 1884, 1893. See my Chaucer Manual, p. 425. 

Garl. Skelton’s Garland of Laurel, printed pp. 336 ff. here. 

Gen. Introd. The General Introduction to this volume. 

Gesta Romanorum. For note on this collection of anecdotes and stories see my 
Chaucer Manual, p. 90. The Latin is edited by Oesterley, Berlin, 1871 et seq., 
and by Dick, Leipzig, 1890; transl. into English by Charles Swan, see ed. N. 
Y., 1924. 

Gower. See under Confessio above; see pp. 21, 96, 164 ff. 

Grammarians. See Grammatici Latini, ed. H. Keil, Leipzig, 1857-78, 7 vols. and 
suppl., for Donatus, Priscian, etc. 

Guido. Guido delle Colonne, translator, from Benoit’s French, of the Historia 
Trojana; cited by Lydgate as source of his Troy Book. No modern edition. 

Guy of Warwick. By Lydgate; see pp. 96, 100 here. 


Halliwell, MinPo. A Selection from the Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, ed. 
by J. O. Halliwell, London, for the Percy Society, 1840. Ill done, with much 
spurious matter. 

Handlists. Handlists of English Printers, 1501-1556. London, 1895, 1896, for 
the Bibliographical Society. See my Chaucer Manual, p. 548. 

Hardyng. The extract from Hardyng’s Chronicle, printed pp. 233 ff. here. 

Harl. As applied to a MS, one of the sub-collection formerly owned by Lord 
Harley, and now in the British Museum. 

Harv.Stud. Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, pubd. under the 
direction of the Modern Language Departments of Harvard University, 
1892 ff. 

Hawes. Stephen Hawes’ Pastime of Pleasure, from which extracts are printed pp. 
268 ff. here. 

Hazlitt. W.C. Hazlitt, editor of the 1871 revision of Warton’s History of Eng- 
lish Poetry, on which see my Chaucer Manual, p. 556-57. Editor of Remains 
of Early Popular Poetry, as above; etc. etc. 

Henryson, Robert, “the schoolmaster of Dunfermline,” died ca. 1506. The most 
Chaucerian of the “Scottish Chaucerians”. Poems ed. G. Gregory Smith for 
the Scottish Text Society, 3 vols., 1906-14. An ed. in one volume, with texts 
selected and slightly modernized, is by W. M. Metcalfe, Paisley, 1917. See 
p- 25 here. 

Hh. Class-mark of MSS in the University Library, Cambridge. 


REFERENCE LIST 545 


Higden. Compiler of the Polychronicon, ed., with Trevisa’s English translation, 
for the Rolls Series, 1865. The Polychronicon was completed in 1387. 

HistEEPO. Warton’s History of English Poetry; see under Hazlitt above. 

HM. The usual mark of a MS in the collection of the late Henry E. Huntington, 
San Gabriel, California. 

HoFame. Chaucer’s Hous of Fame. 

Horns. Lydgate’s poem Horns Away, printed pp. 110 ff. here. 

HorGoSheep. Lydgate’s poem The Horse, the Goose, and the Sheep, ed. Degen- 
hart, Leipzig, 1900. 

How A Lover. The anonymous poem “How a Lover Praiseth his Lady”, printed 
by me in Modern Philology 21 : 379-395. 

Hunterian. The mark of MSS in the University Library, Glasgow. 

Huntington. See under HM above. 

Hye Way to the Spyttelhous. See under Copland here. 

Hyginus. A mythographer, died ca. A.p. 17. His Fabulae are in Scriptores Rerum 
Mythicarum Latini Tres, ed. Bode, Kiel, 1834. 


Isidor. Isidor bishop of Seville, “Isidorus Hispalensis”, died ca. 636 A.D. His 
Opera are in Migne’s Patrologia latina, vols. 81-84; his principal work, the 
Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, is ed. by W. M. Lindsay, Oxford, 
1911, 2 vols. 

Isle of Ladies is ed. Sherzer, Berlin diss. 1905. See my Chaucer Manual, p. 429. 


James I king of Scotland. See under Kingis Quair. 

Jamieson. Editor of Barclay’s Ship of Fools, q.v. 

James, Dr. Montague Rhodes, Compiler of many catalogues of MSS in the libra- 
ries of Cambridge, especially of those in Trinity College, 4 vols., Cambridge 
1900-04 ; author of a volume on the Abbey of St. Edmund at Bury, Cam- 
bridge, 1895. 

Jardin de Plaisance. A fifteenth-century French compilation of amatory and 
didactic prose and verse, facsimiled for the Soc. des anciens textes frangais, 
1910. 

JEGcPhil. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Bloomington, IIls., 
U.S) A. 1897 ff. Ouarterly. 

John of Salisbury, English schoolman of the twelfth century, author of the Poly- 
craticus, a work (Latin) on the vices and follies of courts ; of the Metalogicus ; 
etc. His Opera are pubd. in Migne’s Patrologia latina, vol. 199; and the 
Polycraticus is edited by C. C. J. Webb, Oxford, 1910. See H. O. Taylor’s 
Medieval Mind, vol. ii; see Schaarschmidt’s Johannes Sarisberiensis, Leipzig, 


1862. 


Kingis Quair. The single poem by King James I of Scotland; accessible in ed. 
by Skeat, Scottish Text Society, 1884, or in ed. of Medieval Scottish Poetry 
by G. Eyre-Todd, Glasgow, 1892. See also Alex. Lawson, London, 1910. A 
monograph by J. T. T. Brown, Glasgow 1896, on the authorship of the poem, 
opened a discussion; see Jusserand in Révue historique, vol. 64, R. S. Rait, 
The Kingis Quair and the New Criticism, Aberdeen, 1898. 


546 ABBREVIATIONS 


Kingsford, C. L., died 1927. Editor of Stow’s Survey of London, 2 vols., Oxford, 
1908; author of English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, 
Oxford 1913, and of Prejudice and Promise in Fifteenth Century England, 
Oxford 1925, etc. 

Kk. Class-mark of MSS in the University Library, Cambridge. 

KnTale. Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, from the Canterbury Tales. 

Koeppel. Emil Koeppel, died 1917, author of monographs on Lydgate’s Fall of 
Princes and on his Siege of Thebes; see pp. 151, 120 here. 


La Belle Dame. La Belle Dame sans Mercy, ed. Skeat vii: 299. 

Laborintus. See under Faral above. 

Lansd., Lansdowne. Mark of a collection of MSS in the British Museum, so 
called from its former owner. 

Laurent. Laurent de Premier fait, fifteenth-century French translator of Boccaccio, 
etc.; see p. 150 here, and passim under Fall of Princes; see Notes on that 
poem, A 3, 36, 79, etc. 

Legend. Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women. 

LettGlouc. Lydgate’s Letter to Gloucester, see p. 149 here. 

Leyser. Historia Poetarum et Poematum Medii Aevi, 1721. Now largely super- 
seded by Faral, q.v. 

LGW. Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women. 

Libel. The Libel of English Policy, see pp. 240 ff. here. 

Lickp. London Lickpenny, see p. 237 here. 

Liddell. See under Palladius, p. 202 here. 

Linc. The mark of a MS owned by Lincoln Cathedral. 

Longleat. The mark of a MS in the library of the Marquess of Bath, at Longleat 
House. 


MacCracken. Editor of The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, vol. i, EETS 1911. 
Contains essay on the Canon, and Religious Poems. Reference to the paper 
on the Canon is frequent here.—Editor of The Serpent of Division, see p. 101 
here.—See under FaPrinces A 303 here (Notes) for suggestion as to “Dant 
in English”.—See under Orléans, p. 218 here, for suggestion as to authorship ; 
see pp. 79, 198, note on Garl. 296, on Orl. I-XI. 

Machaut, Guillaume de, died ca. 1377. Oeuvres, ed. Hoepffner, Soc. des anciens 
textes francais, 3 vols., 1908-1921. Poésies lyriques, ed. V. Chichmaref, 
Paris, 1909. 

Macrobius. Of the fifth century. Author of the Saturnalia, a report of conversa- 
tions at a banquet, really an encyclopedia thinly disguised. Author of Com- 
mentarii in Somnium Scipionis, a treatise which preserves for us part of 
Cicero’s De Republica. Macrobius is ed. by Eyssenhardt, Leipzig, 1893; on 
him see Whittaker’s study, Cambridge, 1923, and chap. viii of Glover’s Life 
and Letters in the Fourth Century, 1901. 

Magic. See under Thorndike. 

Magnificence. Skelton’s play of that name; ed. by Ramsay for EETS, 1908. 

Male, E. L’art réligieux de la fin du moyen-age en France. Paris, 1908. 

Malory, Sir Thomas. See Gen. Introd. pp. 30, 34, 36. See the many eds. of his 
Morte dArthur; see Vida D. Scudder, Le Morte dArthur of Sir Thomas 
Malory and its Sources, London and N. Y., 1917. 

MancTale. Chaucer’s Manciple’s Tale, in the Canterbury Tales. 


REFERENCE LIST 547 


Mandeville. His Travels were ed. 1889 for the Roxburghe Club by Sir George 
Warner, with the original French; by A. W. Pollard, London 1900; by Hame- 
lins for the EETS, 1919. 

Map, Walter. Of the twelfth century, a Welshman writing in Latin. Author of 
De Nugis Curialium, ed. Wright for the Camden Society in 1850, and ed. by 
M. R. James, Oxford, 1914; transl. into English, with notes, by Frederick 
Tupper and M. B. Ogle, N. Y., 1924. Map is also redactor of the Arthurian 
romances, and supposed author of a quantity of bitter “Goliardic” verse, ed. 
for the Camden Society, 1841, by Wright, as “Poems of Walter Mapes”. 
See Hinton in PMLA 32: 81-132, Bradley in Engl. Histor. Review 32 : 393-400. 
See note on FaPrinces E 43 here. 

MaReg. Hoccleve’s Male Regle, printed p. 60 here. 

Margarita Philosophica. See p. 269 here. 

Mars. Chaucer’s Complaint of Mars. 

Martianus Capella. Of the latter fifth century, author of De Nuptiis Mercurii et 
Philologiae, an encyclopedic work popular throughout the Middle Ages. It 
is ed. Eyssenhardt, Leipzig, 1866. See note on FaPrinces D 66 here. 

Mass. The Lover’s Mass, printed p. 207 here. 

Matthew of Vendome. See under Vendome. 

McClean. Mark of a MS of the McClean bequest, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, 
Cambridge. 

Melibeus. Chaucer’s tale of Melibeus, in the Canterbury Tales. 

MerchTale. Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale, in the Canterbury Tales. 

Metam. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Convenient edition in the Loeb Library, 2 vols., 
1916. 

MidEng. Middle English. 

Migne. Editor of the Patrologia Cursus Completus, of which the Patrologia 
Latina fills 225 vols., Paris, 1844-55, and includes the Latin works of all 
fathers, doctors, and authorities of the Church, from the apostolic age to the 
time of Pope Innocent III. Ill-printed, and with many errors, but offering 
much material not yet better edited. 

MillTale. The Miller’s Tale, in the Canterbury Tales. 

MinPo. Minor Poems, i.e. of Lydgate. See Halliwell. 

MLWNotes. Modern Language Notes, Baltimore, 1886 ff. 

MLReview. The Modern Language Review, which in 1905 succeeded the Modern 
Language Quarterly. Cambridge, Eng.; quarterly. 

MLTale. The Man of Law’s Tale, in the Canterbury Tales. 

ModPhil. Modern Philology. University of Chicago, 1903 ff.; quarterly. 

Monaci. Editor of Crestomazia Italiana dei Primi Secoli, 1912. 

MoTale. The Monk’s Tale, in the Canterbury Tales. 


Naetebus. Die nichtlyrischen Strophenformen des altfranzésischen, Leipzig, 1891. 

NED. The New English Dictionary, Oxford 1888-1927. Additions and cor- 
rective suggestions, see p. 87; see, in Glossary, under amount, degest, erron- 
youse, engrosid, frowtse, lurke, mortalite, obscure, prouect, salarie, satirray, 
?spare, sufficistent, trions, vauntwarde. In the Notes see Walton A 360, Horns 
23, 37, Thebes 169, LettGlouc. 12, 55, FaPrinces A 398, B 143, Mass 165, 
Orl. v, Hawes 87, 494, 663, Nevill 49, Nevill envoy 4, Garl. 785, 1074, Ecl. 
596, 994, Ecl. prol. 21, Cavend. 1251. See under affoyle, drames, glutton, 
lauer, plummet, quacham. On the Dictionary’s attribution of poems see 
Mass, p. 208, Lickp., p. 238. 


548 ABBREVIATIONS 


Neilson. Neilson and Webster’s ed. of The Chief British Poets of the Fourteenth 
and Fifteenth Centuries. Boston, n.d. (?1916). 

Nevill, Nevill dial., Nevill envoy. The extracts from Nevill’s Castell of Pleasure, 
p. 287 here. 

NPTale. The Nonne Prestes Tale, in the Canterbury Tales. 


OEng. Old English. 
OFr. Old French. 
Orl. The translations from Charles d’Orléans’ verse, pp. 214 ff. here. 


Pallad. The translation of Palladius De re rustica; prologue printed p. 202 here. 
Pallad.A,B,C,D. The four “linking-stanzas’” from the above work, p. 206 here. 
PardTale. The Pardoner’s Tale, from the Canterbury Tales. 

ParsTale. The Parson’s Tale, from the Canterbury Tales. 

Phillipps. Many Chaucer and Lydgate MSS were formerly in the great collection 
of the late Sir Thomas Phillipps, at Cheltenham, but are now all in other 
libraries. No. 9053 (miscell.) is Brit. Mus. Adds. 34360; no. 4255 (Fa- 
Princes) is in the hands of Quaritch; nos. 8117 and 8118 (FaPrinces) are 
owned by Robert Garrett of Baltimore and John Gribbel of Philadelphia ; no. 
8151 (Hoccleve) is now HM 111 of the Huntington Library, California, and 
no, 8299 (miscell.) is no. 140 of the same library. Other Phillipps MSS are 
at present (1927) in the hands of Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach of New York 
viz. :—nos. 1099 (Hoccleve and Walton), 4254 (FaPrinces), 6570 (fragments 
of the CantTales), 8136 and 8137 (CantTales), 8192 (Gower’s Confessio). 
8250 (Chaucer’s Troilus). y 

Piers Plowman. Edited by Skeat, 2 vols., Oxford, 1886. Cited by either the A,B, 
or C-recension, and by Passus or section. 

PilgLifeMan. Lydgate’s verse-translation of Deguilleville’s Pélerinage de la Vie 
Humaine, ed. for EETS 1899-1904, as The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man. 

Pity. Chaucer’s poem so entitled. 

PMLA. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 1884 ff. ; 


quarterly. 

PoFoules. Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules. 

Polit.Poems. Political Poems and Songs . . . from the Accession of Edward III 
to that of Richard III, ed. by Thomas Wright, 1859-61, for the Rolls Series, 
2 vols. 


PolReligLove Poems. Political, Religious, and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall for the 
EETS in 1866, and revised 1903. 

Praise of Chaucer. Three extracts from Hoccleve’s De Regimine Principum, in 
praise of his master ; see p. 74-75 here. 

PriorTale. The Prioress’ Tale, from the Canterbury Tales. 

Priscian. See under Grammarians. 

Prohib. The final chapter or “Prohibitio” of Ripley’s Compend of Alchemy. See 
p. 256 here. 

ProlCT. The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 

Prompt. Parv. Promptorium Parvulorum, the first English-Latin dictionary, ed. 
for the EETS by A. L. Mayhew, 1908. 


Quaritch. The foremost bookdealing business of the English-speaking world 
takes its name from its founder, the late Bernard Quaritch. 


REFERENCE LIST 549 


Rashdall. See under Education ante. 

RefList. This Reference List. 

RegPrinc. Hoccleve’s poem The Regement of Princes, or De Regimine Princi- 
pum; extracts pp. 74-75 here. Edited entire for the EETS in vol. iii of 
Hoccleve’s works, 1897. 

Relig.Antiq. Reliquiae Antiquae, ed. J. O. Halliwell and Thomas Wright, 2 vols., 
London 1841-43. A collection of shorter poems and scraps from MSS, in 
several languages. 

Renaud. See Gen. Introd. pp. 32-33. 

Reproof. A Reproof to Lydgate, printed p. 198 here. 

ResonandSens. Lydgate’s poem Reson and Sensuality, ed. for the EETS 1901-3. 

Rhetoric. See under Faral ante, and under Venddme below. The Poetria of 
Johannes de Garlandia is ed. by Mari in Rom. Forsch. vol. 13. For earlier 
treatises see collection ed. by Halm, Rhetores Latini Minores, Leipzig, 1863; 
see under Ad Herennium ante. 

Ripley. The extracts from George Ripley’s Compend of Alchemy, here printed p. 
252. See also under Prohibicio. 

Rolls Series. The series of Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ire- 
land during the Middle Ages, pubd. under the direction of the Master of the 
Rolls, in London. 

Romania. Paris, 1872 ff.; quarterly. 

Rom.Forsch. Romanische Forschungen, Erlangen, 1833 ff.; quarterly. 

Rom.Review. Romanic Review, New York (Columbia Univ.), 1910 ff. ; quarterly. 

RomRose. Le Roman de la Rose, a French poem of the 13th century, of enormous 
influence in West Europe. Translated or partly translated by Chaucer; see 
my Manual, p. 450. Edited by Méon in 1814, by Michel in 1864, by Marteau 
in 1878-80, by Langlois, SATF, 5 vols., 1914-1924. 

Rosenbach. Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, bibliophile and dealer, New York City. 

Round. One of Hoccleve’s three roundels here printed p. 68. 

Royal. As applied to a MS, one of the Royal collection of the British Museum. 
See Catalogue of the Western MSS in the Old Royal and Kings’ Collections, 
London, 1921, for full descriptions and much information. 

Rylands. The John Rylands Library at Manchester, England. 

Rymer’s Foedera. Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae, et cujusque generis Acta 
Publica (etc.) 1101-1654. 20 vols. London, 1704-35. 


Salisbury, John of. See John of Salisbury. 

Sandys. History of Classical Scholarship, by J. E. Sandys, Cambridge 1903-08, 
3 vols. 

SATF. Société des anciens textes francais, Paris. Issues one or more medieval 
French texts each year. 

SatirPoets. The Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth 
Century, ed. Thomas Wright, 2 vols., London, 1872. 

SecNunTale. The Second Nun’s Tale, in the Canterbury Tales. 

Secrees. The Secrees of Olde Philisoffres, by Lydgate and ?Burgh. EETS 1894. 

Selden. Class-mark of a collection of MSS in the Bodleian Library. 

Serpent of Division. Prose tractate probably by Lydgate; ed. MacCracken, Ox- 
ford, 1911. 

Servius. See under Virgil. 


550 ABBREVIATIONS 


ShephCal. The Shepherd’s Calendar of Spenser, 

Ship. Barclay’s rendering, from Locher, of Brant’s Ship of Fools. See extracts 
pp. 298 ff. 

Shirley. John Shirley, fifteenth-century copyist of Chaucer and Lydgate; see p. 
191 here. 

Sir Thopas. Chaucer’s Rime of Sir Thopas, in the Canterbury Tales. 

Skeat, Walter William, died 1912. Author of various works on English philology, 
and editor of many Early English texts. See his “Oxford” edition of 
Chaucer, 6 vols., 1894 and subsequently, and especially the supplementary 
volume “Chaucerian and Other Pieces,” cited here as wit.—Skeat was also 
editor of a volume of Specimens of English Literature 1394-1579, Oxford, 
1871 and many reprints, cited here as Specimens. This volume followed on 
R. Morris’ Specimens of Early English Literature (the Old Eng. Homilies to 
King Horn), and on Morris and Skeat’s companion volume covering Robert 
of Gloucester to Gower. 

Sloane. As applied to a MS, one of the collection in the Brit. Mus. bearing that 
name. 

Somer. Hoccleve’s poem to the sub-treasurer Somer; see p. 66 here. 

Specimens. See Skeat. 

Speculum. Publ. quarterly, 1926 ff., by the Medieval Academy of America, 
Boston, Mass. 

Speght. Editor or part-editor of the Chaucer of 1598; see my Manual, pp. 
122-128. 

SPT. Supplementary Parallel Texts of Chaucer’s Minor Poems, Chaucer Society. 

Spurgeon, Caroline F. E. Compiler of : Five Hundred Years of Chaucer-Criticism 
and Allusion, Chaucer Society, 1908-1926, five parts. 

SqTale. The Squire’s Tale, in the Canterbury Tales. 

Stow, John. See p. 193 here; and see under Kingsford. 

STS. The Scottish Text Society, founded 1884. 

Summ.Catal. A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian 
Library at Oxford which have not hitherto been catalogued in the quarto 
series. Oxford 1895—in progress. Vols. III-VI have appeared; vols. I and 
II are to be a new edition of the Old Catalogue by Bernard etc., 1697, and of 
this vol. I part i has been pubd., 1922. 

Tanner. The class-mark of a collection of MSS in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 

TemGlass. Lydgate’s Temple of Glass, ed. for the EETS 1891 by Dr. Schick. 

ten Brink. ten Brink’s (unfinished) History of English Literature was pubd. 
1877-89, and transl. into English in 1883-93. See my Chaucer Manual, p. 
555, and for ten Brink’s other volumes see p. 556; see ibid. p. 520. 

Test. Lydgate’s Testament ; see p. 101 here, also pp. 79-80. 

TestLove. The Testament of Love, a prose treatise of the fourteenth century; 
see ed. in Skeat vol. vii. 

Thebes. Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes; prologue printed pp. 118 ff. here. 

Thorndike. History of Magic and Experimental Science during the First Thirteen 
Centuries of our Era, by Lynn Thorndike, 2 vols. New York, 1923. 

Trevisa. John of Trevisa, died 1412, did most of his translation for Thomas lord 
Berkeley. His version of Higden’s Polychronicon, finished in 1387, is ed. in 
the Rolls Series 1865; his transl. of Bartholomaeus’ De Proprietatibus Rerum 
was finished in 1398. 


REFERENCE LIST 551 


Trin.Coll. The mark of a Trinity College MS, either at Cambridge or at Oxford. 
The Oxford college distinguishes by a following numeral; the great Cam- 
bridge college classes its MSS under various alphabetical divisions, having the 
more important English MSS in class R. Thus,—the often-mentioned Shirley 
MS R 3,20. 

Tyrwhitt. Thomas Tyrwhitt, classical and English scholar, executed the first 
critical edition of the Canterbury Tales entire. See my Chaucer Manual, pp. 
205 ff. 


Ubi Sunt motif. See p. 169 here. 
ULC. The University Library, Cambridge, England. 
Utter thy Language. Poem by Lydgate, ed. Halliwell MinPo, p. 173. 


Venus. Chaucer’s poem The Complaint of Venus. 

Vendéme, Matthew of, or Matthaeus Vindocinensis. A twelfth-century rheto- 
rician, two of whose works are ed. by Faral as ante. Matthew’s importance 
has not yet been estimated for Chaucer and the Chaucerians, although notes 
on the subject are beginning to appear, see e.g. Goffin in ModLangReview 
21:13, and Prof. Manly’s Warton lecture on Chaucer and the Rhetoricians, 
pubd. Oxford, 1926. Matthew’s Tobias was ed. by Mueldener, Gottingen, 
1855, from 6 MSS in German libraries. His Ars Versificatoria was ed.. Bour- 
gain, Paris, 1879, and by Faral as ante; portions are in Relig. Antiq. ii: 257 ff., 
reprinted in Migne, vol. 205, where is also the Tobias from the ed. by Hering 
of 1642. Matthew’s collection of model letters is printed by Wattenbach in 
Sitzungsberichte der konigl. bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 
Munich, 1872, iii: 561-631. 

Vincent de Beauvais. Compiler of a four-volume encyclopedia in the thirteenth 
century,—the Speculum Historiale, Speculum Doctrinale, Speculum Naturale, 
and a Speculum Morale not certainly by Vincent. 

Vinsauf, Gaufrid or Geoffroi de. Of the thirteenth century ; author of a rhetorical 
treatise for which see Faral as ante. 

Virgil. See in especial Comparetti’s Vergil in the Middle Ages, Eng. transl., Lon- 
don, 1895. For the allegorical interpretation of Virgil see Servius’ com- 
mentary, ed. Thilo and Hagen, Leipzig, 1878-87, 3 vols. ; see under Fulgentius. 


Walton. Extracts from John Walton’s transl. of the Consolatio Philosophiae are 
here printed pp. 39 ff. 

Ward, Catal. Catalogue of Romances in the Manuscript Department of the 
British Museum, ed. H. L. D. Ward, completed by J. A. Herbert. London, 
1883 ff., 3 vols. 

Warton, HistEEPoetry. See under Hazlitt ante, and see my Chaucer Manual, p. 
556-57. 

Watermarks of paper, see under Filigranes. 

WBprol., WBTale. The Wife of Bath’s prologue and tale, in the Canterbury 
Tales. 

Wells. A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1400. By J. E. Wells. 
London and New Haven 1916; first supplement 1919. 

Wright,Politpoems,—SatirPoems. See ante under those abbreviations, and under 
Map. 

Wiilker. Editor of an Altenglisches Lesebuch, 2 vols., Halle, 1874-80. Editor 
of Anglia for years, and late professor at the University of Leipzig. 


SELECT GLOSSARY AND FINDING LIST 


No attempt is made here to include all variants in spelling, for example as between -i- and 
-y-, or to cite words of which the meaning is recognizable despite slight archaism, such as list; 
nor is any attempt made to elucidate terms like Hector or Mercury, or to catalogue all mentions 
of names. The constant reference to Lydgate or to Chaucer, in the various Introductions here, 
would if recognized extend this Index beyond all bounds; and to collect all the echoes of the 
Bible or all the proverbial material or all the cases of alliteration would be a labor in itself. 

An asterisk, following a line-number, means that a note on the word is to be found there. 

The Court of Sapience extracts are neither annotated nor glossed. 


A, Ah! Walton A 273, MaReg. 265*, FaPrin. D 
78, Pallad. A 1, Burgh 34, Reproof 64, Orl. 
xii: 12, 18, Libel 455, Ship 585, Ecl. 435;—on, 
Nevill dial. 47. 

aart, art, MaReg. 32. 

abasched, abaisshid, abashed, Walton A 
382, Dance 89, 98, FaPrin. G 16. 

abate, to bring down, Dance 12, 150. 

abhomynable, abominable, Walton E 93*, Fa- 
Prin. G 320, Ship 8515. 

abiect, to cast out, cast down, Hawes 4245, Ecl. 
713;—to object, Ecl. prol.41, 89;—a. prone, 
Ripley 169*. 

abit, v. abides, Dance 405, FaPrin. E 104. 

abood, s. delay, FaPrin. B 150;—». remained, 
FaPrin. G 69, 116, 236. 

abraid, abrayde, v. speak out, start up, Churl 
83, FaPrin. B 1*;—». to approach, FaPrin. A 
451, G 174. 

abrode, abroad, FaPrin. G 147, etc. 

absent, v. Orl. xiv: 19%. 

Absolon, Cavend. epit. 14. 

abuse, to be mistaken, Ecl. 505; see Cavend. 68. 

abusion, s. abuse, Libel 32, FaPrin. D 113. 

abye, to pay dearly, Hawes 4330. 

abyt, s. habit, Walton A 375. 

acate, s. purchasing, MaReg. 181. 

access, Garl. 315*. 

accessary, 5. aid, support, Garl. 523. 

accloyed, hampered; Ship, heading on p.304. 

accuate, acuate, a. sharpened, refined, Ripley 
136*, Prohib. 47. 

accusith, v. discloses, MaReg. 40. See Chaucer 
RomRose 1591. 

ace, s. Pallad. 16, 17*. 

Achilliedos, Garl. 337*. 

aclere, v. to clear, Orl. xv: 23. 

acquite, aquytte, acquitted, Thebes 29, see 72. 

acustomabill, usual, Garl. 1108. 

adauntid, v. beat down, Garl. 1276. 

a dewe, adieu, Dance 166, 200. 

admittible, admissible, MaReg. 299. 

aduenture, risk, Hawes 4221;—chance. Ecl. 
178. 

aduersite, opposition, attack, MaReg. 5*, 47. 

aduerte, aduertise, to attend, notice, Dance 
615, FaPrin. A 202, D 79, Orl. xvi:15, Nevill 
121;—to know, Orl. xxi:14;—to consider, Fa- 
Prin. A 164, Cavend. 263. 


aduertence, attention, Dance 2, Ship 13826. 

aduertisement, attention, Garl. 792. 

enaeement consideration, Ecl. 784, Cavend. 
15. 

adumantes, diamonds, Nevill 185. 

aduoutrers, adulterers, Ecl. 666. 

adyment, adamant, Garl. 305. 

aege, age, Nevill dial. 8, Nevill 16, 212. 

eee interested desire, FaPrin. A 368, 

4. 

affore, afforn, before, Churl 118 etc., Dance 5, 
etc., Thebes 124, FaPrin. E 58 etc., Morley 15. 

afforcid, v. strengthened, Dance 140, FaPrin. 
G 52. See Churl 64. 

affoyle, Orl. xiv: 13*. 

affray, terrifying, Churl 222; — discomfiture, 
Libel 535. 

affter, according to, Churl 321, FaPrin. A 361, 
432, G 199, Shirley I: 11, Reproof 32, 78, Orl. 
ix: 3, vii: 1, Prohib. 12, Ship 570, Ecl. prol. 10, 
88, Ecl. 321, Garl. 39, 800, 1431;—afterward. 
FaPrin. A 103, 123, G 264, 274, Hawes 1263. 

after one, on one pattern, Ecl. 102. 

affyaunsynge, pledging, Garl. 555. 

afor, aforn, before, Dance 376, Epithal. 3, Mass 
9; etc. 

atcureae, read aforne, i.e., previously, Dance 

4 


Agellius, Aulus Gellius, i.e., A. Gellius. 

agerdows, sour-sweet, Garl. 1223. Fr. aigre- 
doux. 

ageyn, back, Walton D 59, FaPrin. D 97,99;— 
in return, Ship 85, Cavend. 1226.—for, To 
Somer 19. 

ageyn, ayens, against, Churl 53 etc., Dance 
349 etc., Epithal. 45, FaPrin. B 47, D 96,H 11, 
Hardyng 10, 37, 105 etc., Nevill envoy 10, 
Garl, 103, 211, 656, 1116:—for, FaPrin. G 76, 
Garl. 1359, 1509, 1513, 1515. pere ageyne, 
thereagainst, on the contrary, Walton E 106. 

aght, aught, MaReg. 319, Roundel 2. 

agilte, offended, Dial. 751. 

Agincourt, Shirley I: 54. Hardyng as p. 233. 

agone, ago, FaPrin. A 302, Ship 8448, etc. 

agoo, gone, Walton C 28. 

agreeth, suits, Ecl. 198, 201. 

ai, aye, always, FaPrin. D 67. 

Iam aknowe, I confess, Mass 15. 

at al, completely, Churl 272, Epithal. 100. 


AND FINDING LIST 553 


alak, alack! Orl. xv: 16. 

alate, recently, Hawes 325. 

Alathea, Ecl. prol. 39*. 

Alaunson, Alengon, Hardyng 92. 

albe, although, FaPrin. E 21. 

Albumasar, Garl. 1395. 

albyfycatyve, whitening, a 195. 

Albyoun, Albion, Shirley I: 

Alcest, Alcestis, Churl 68, On. xvii: 10. 

Alchemy, see Ripley. 

Alcione, Alcyone, FaPrin. A 304. 

Alcreatour, Creator of all, Pallad. 2. 

alegge, to state, Dial. 588*, Shirley I: 69. 

aleven, eleven, Burgh 54. 

Aleyn, Alanus de Insulis, Horns 17*. See Ref. 
List. 

algate, anyway, MaReg. 183, FaPrin. B 26, 
Ripley 180, Nevill dial. 39. 

Alisaunder, Alexander, FaPrin. E 92. See Nevill 
836, Ecl. 1098, Garl. 367, Cavend. epit. 12. 

alite, mounted, Hawes 4249. 

alkyns, of every kind, Hardyng 6. 

all, s. awl, FaPrin. E 54 

allay, s. alloy, Horns 6. 

Allecto, one of the Furies, Walton A 61. 

allectyng, alluring, Nevill 185. See talecte. 
First case NED 1528. 

alleggen, to relieve, FaPrin. G 255, Mass 160. 
See Dial. 588*. See alegge. 

Allegory discussed, Gen. Introd. p. 28. See 
Epithal. 143*, 

allewei, always, FaPrin. C 25, G 229. 

all if, although, Ecl. 157, 734, 917. 

allonly, solely, Orl. 1x: 22. 

alloone, all one, united, Epithal. 18. 

Almayne, Alemannia, Germany, Ship 6976. 

allmeest, almost, Pallad. A 4. 

almes, charity, Ecl. 1020. See FaPrin. A 206. 

alom, alum, Libel. 328. 

alon, alone, all one? Orl. xxii: 9. 

Alone without company. See note, Orl. xv:19. 

alowe, to praise, Dial. 717, Nevill dial. 21, Ecl. 
719. Lat. allaudare. 

als, as, Walton A 19, Libel 355, 363; —also. 
Hardyng 4, 36, 74, Libel 233, 256, 523, Orl. 
xix: 25; —so. Libel 477; —for? Orl. xvii: 21, xix: 
2s 

alsapyent, all-wise, Pallad. 10. 

alys, alleys, Garl. 648, Cavend. 118. 

ambages, s. obscurities, double meanings, Ecl. 
707. 


ambicious, haughty, FaPrin. E 48. 

ameede, miswritten for amende. FaPrin. A 40. 

amenusyng, diminishing, FaPrin. C 107. 

amiddes, in the midst of, Hawes 4353. 

amitie, amyte, fervent affection, Hawes 1335, 
Nevill 7. 

among, therewith, Dial. 792, FaPrin. D 106, 
E 97, Mass 176, Lickp. 98, Hawes 1344, 4344; 
—sometimes, FaPrin. A 120, ?363, ?D 106. 

amongys, among, Mass 28. 

amount, to increase in estimation, Garl. 346. 
First case NED 1563. 

Amphion, Garl. 273. 


ampille, ample, Garl. 222. 

ampty, empty, Walton, A 270. 

an, on, Dance 190. 

Anaphora, See note Cavend. 232. 

and, an, if, Dial. 766, LettGlouc. 1, Burgh 41, 
Shirley T :72, Orl. xi:8, xvi1:19, Libel 516, 
Hawes 674, Garl. 462, 738, 1060, Cavend. 188. 

and eke also, Thebes 32*. 

anende, constantly, Pallad. B 3. 

an hondryd, a hundred, Mass 185. 

annexed, Hawes 591. 

annunciate, announced, Hawes 685. 

annys, anise, Thebes 118. 

anon riht,immediately, FaPrin. G 23. So anon, 
Hardyng 18. 

anon to, as far as, Walton E 73, 151. 

Antigone. See note FaPrin. A 246. 

antimony, Prohib. 39*. 

Reyes Hannibal, Cavend. epit. 14, Cavend. 
1136. 

apall, a. pale, aghast, Morley 222. 

aparayle, equipment, Ship 158;—apparel, Ship 
470, 492, 580, 8470, 8482. 

apast, past, Orl. xvi:9, xvii:24. NED gives cases 
from the romances. 

apayed, pleased, Hawes 277. 

apayred, impaired, made worse, Ship 470. 

apese, to mitigate, FaPrin. B 16, D 109. See 
appease. 

ale a work by Skelton, Garl. 1436, 1445, 
1455. 

Apology, See Correcte, request to. See Wal- 
tonwAvI*,) 537. 

apon, upon, Ripley 152. 

apoynt, Pallad. 17*. 

appade, appayed, pleased, Nevill 126. 

appall, to fade, to lose color or vigor. MaReg. 
310, Thebes 44, FaPrin. A 395;— to cause to 
lose strength, Cavend. 1310. 

apparage, apparatus? Nevill 109. 

Apparel, Acts of, See notes, Ship 498, 515, 533. 

apparence, appearance, Horns 2, Dance 351, 
SDD. 


appease, to relieve, Hawes 4400. See apese. 

appert, open, MaReg. 270, Orl. xi:8. 

appliaunt, diligent, docile, Hawes 1102. 

apply, to tend, Ecl. 159. 

appoorte, s. bearing, Epithal. 86. 

appreued, approved, Shirley 1:6, 42. 

appropryng, assigning, Ecl. prol. 87. 

apreef, s. approved worth, Libel 242. 

Apuly, Apulia, in southern Italy, Ship 6969. 

ar, are, FaPrin. B 69 etc. 

oa aras, Arras tapestry, Garl. 475, Cavend. 

arage, to enrage? Hawes 1110. 

aray, condition, Orl. xviii:15;— court of aray, 
a formally summoned court, Garl. 539. 

arayed, prepared, Walton A 238. 

arbitrye, judgment, Walton E 36. 

arbor. See Nevill 427*, Cavendish 115-118*, 
Garl. 646. 

arche wyves, Horns 37*. 

ardente, spirituous, Prohib. 8. 


554 SELECT GLOSSARY 


opel Ship 78*;— behind, at disadvantage, Ecl. 
65 


arestid, checked, Dance 456. 

arett, to consider, repay. Orl, xiii:14. 

arghnesse, timidity, MaReg. 435. 

Argia, Morley 224. 

Argus, FaPrin. A 383, D 21. 

Aristeus, Ecl. 889*. 

Aristotell, Aristotle, Praise of Chaucer 2088, 
Burgh 10, Nevill 841, Garl. 127. 

arke, arc, FaPrin. B 115*. 

Arnold, Cornelius, poem by, see note Dance 513. 

arrayed, put forth, Walton C 4; —placed, Libel 
324. 


arrect, to raise (the eyes), to prick up (the ears) 
Garl. 1, 808, Nevill envoy 4*; —to submit? 
Garl. 55, 410*. 

arrest, standeth at, “is held in durance’, 
Morley 158. 

Arrians, Arians, Walton A 168*, 177, 182, 192, 
199: 

arsnyke, arsenic, Prohib. 24. 

artid, to cause, compel, MaReg. 396, 438. 

artike, Arctic, Garl. 689. 

Arts, the Seven Liberal, see under Seven etc., 
below. 

as, so, thus, Walton A 16, Orl. xiii:19, xv:15;— 
as if, FaPrin. A 167, 169 etc. 

as, introducing a clause, see note, Walton A 17; 
Orl. xii:1,*, xxiii:10. 

asaiyd, assayed, tested, Garl. 759. 

ascaunce, Dial. 620*, Orl. vii:6. 

ascendent. See FaPrin. A 300*. 

askes, ashes, Hardyng 27. 

askry, to assail with a shout, Garl. 1324. See 
escry. 

as nowe, just now, at once, Dance 192, Orl. 
xi11:32. 

aspectis, Epithal. 1*, FaPrin. E 88. 

assay, to try, test, use, Walton B 7, MaReg. 36, 
Horns 14, FaPrin. A 195, Shirley 1:48, 11:61, 
Orl. xviti: 12, jetckp. 106, Prohib. 3s Libel 40, 
540, Ship 52 

assencioun, lee the rising arc of a 
planet, FaPrin. C 71. 

assent, agreement, Churl 18, 171. 

assise, assize, session of justice, Dance 267. 

asson, as soon, Cavend. 144. 

Assonance, see FaPrin. B 154*, Hawes 92-4, 
4224*, Garl. 335-6, etc., 980, Cavend. 162-4, 
272-3, 1281-3. 

assoyle, absolve, Shirley 1:38. 

assur, azure, FaPrin. K 12. 

assuraunce, security, FaPrin. E 96. 

assurded, broke out, (O. F. assourdre, to rise 
up), Garl. 392; only case in NED. 

assure, to find safety, Pallad. 43; —assured, 
Mass 11. 

assured, azured, Hawes 4219. 

asswagin, to assuage, FaPrin. D 95, Mass 159. 

astat, see estate. 

asterte, to escape, avoid, MaReg. 96, Churl 
111, Dance 510, FaPrin. B 29, 152, Orl. xi:11, 
XXIeiOe 


astonid, astonished, FaPrin. D 132, G 15. 

apne to assuage, Walton A 360". See ass- 
wag 

at al, People Churl 272;—in every way. 
Epithal. 100. 

atame, to lay hands on, Walton C 36. 

atchyved, achieved, Cavend. 1138. 

ateynt, attained, Lickp. 2. 

Athlant, Atlantis, Ship 6972. 

athlas, Atlas, Garl. 684. 

Athrvmmys, Garl. 209*, 

atonys, attonys, at once, Orl. xxi:l, 11. 

attame, to broach, i.e., drain, LettGlouc. 51*. 

attaste, to taste, experience, Hawes 1104. 

atte, at the, Walton A 130, 132, Dance 25*, Fa- 
Prin. D 69, G 164, Libel 193, 427, etc. 

aa accused, Garl. 605; —stained, Mass 
4 

atteyne, take a hand, FaPrin. A 107. 

attise, to entice? Cavend. 33. 

attyres, solicitations, Morley 172. 

atwen, between, FaPrin. A 266, Cop} 

atwyte, to blame, FaPrin. B 99. 

auale, to fall, Thebes 8;—to set, sink, Hawes 
65, 4347 ;—to bend, conform, Dance 347 —s. 
profit, Prohib. 51, etc. 

auans, to advance, Orl. vii:3; to put forward, 
Garl. 806. 

aueyie, be of profit, Ship 148; —s. profit, Ship 
159; 


auctor, autour, author. 

auctoritee, authority. 

auctorised, authorized, Dance 177;—recorded? 
FaPrin. A 154. 

auctrice, s. (feminine) authority, Dial. 694. 

audience, s. hearing, MaReg. 202, Horns 44, 
Hawes 251, Nevill 74. 

auenter, to venture, Ship 80. auenterous, 
venturesome, Ship 37. 

auenture, s. chance, lot, Dance 658, FaPrin. 
B 112, 114, G 284, Reproof 35, Mass 132, Orl. 
xv:9, 18, etc.;—». to venture, Libel 331. 

in auenture, in danger, Churl 208, LettGlouc. 
36. 


auertise, to consider, FaPrin. A 186. See ad- 
uerte. 

aught, ought, Phuley 11:32. 
FaPrin. G 324 

Augustus, Morley 148, see Octavia 

auisines, judgment, Orl. 

me auysid, I took note, Cea 36. See Garl. 78, 


386. 
Aulus Gellius, Garl. 351. See Agellius. 
auncetry, ancestry, Ship 506 
on aunter, in case, Walton A 55. 
auoyde, a. devoid, Ecl. 380, 458, 699, 701; — 
v. remove, Ecl. 385. 
aureat, golden, FaPrin. A 461, C 13. 
Aureate Language, see p. 25, 453, see MaReg. 1*. 
aurum musicum, Garl. 1145*. 
aurum potabile, LettGlouc. 46", Ripley 160. 
Auster, the south wind, Hawes 301%. 
autentyk, authentic, Epithal. 36. 
auter, altar, Mass 2 


auhte, ought, 


AND FINDING LIST 555 


“Autograph MS” of Orleans, p. 217. 

auycen, Avicenna, Garl. 1393. 

avaunt, awaunt, s. and v. boast, MaReg. 6, 
Walton A 289, Orl. xxi:4. 

aver, possession, Dance 298*. 

avert, to advert, attend, Orl. xx:5. 

avis, auys, consideration, Walton A 111, 198, 
Dance 96, FaPrin. A 307, Pallad. 42, Libel 214. 

avise, to give thought, Dance 248. ; 

avise, avysee, prudent, FaPrin. A 71, Epithal. 
87*. 


avisement, prudent consideration, FaPrin. E 
34 


avisioun, vision, FaPrin. G 256. 

avne, own, Walton A 188. 

avoyd, to banish, remove, FaPrin. A 439, B 78, 
Ecl. 385; —to depart, Cavend. 198. 

awail, s. profit, FaPrin. G 258. 

awaitepe, lies in wait for, Bycorne 128. 

awaityng, ambush, FaPrin. A 63. 

awhappyd, stupefied with fear, FaPrin. B 141. 

awne, own, Walton A 323. 

axe, axyth, etc., to ask. 

axes, s. access, Garl. 315*. 

ayed, s. aid, Cavend. 1389. 

ayein, ayen, again, Churl 69;—in return, Orl. 
xviii:9, Libel 329, 500; —thither, Pallad. 36; — 
against, Dance 79, 152, 280, 349, 380, 418, 422, 
447, 474, 613, 618, Reproof 70. 

a3ens, against, Dance 429, 432, 442, 479, 598. 

ayenst, toward, Libel 32;—against, Libel 32, 
Cavend. 164, 173, etc. 

aylen, to ail, Walton C 9. 


baar, v. bore, Roundel 1. 

babill, Babel, Garl. 553. 

babyll, bauble, Ship 105*, 502, Ecl. 236. 

Bacchus, FaPrin. C 90, D 68, Ecl. 690, 1031, 
Garl. 334, 341, etc. 

bace, (chemical) base, Ripley 139, 150, 175;— 
down, Walton A 256. 

bad, Walton A 269. 

badder, worse, Ecl. 123. 

bagge, purse, MaReg. 163. 

bake, back, Mass 157. 

balade, stanza, Shirley 1:79;—a poem in stan- 
zas, a poem, Shirley 1:87, (see 11:23), Pallad. 6, 
Hawes 1335, Ecl. 142, 151, 286, 745, 747, 758, 
see Cavend. 134;—to make stanzaic verse, Orl. 
xiii:31. 

balassis, grouped rubies used as ornaments, 
Garl. 1144. 

bale, s. ill, Hardyng 28, Hawes 4290, Garl. 


377. 
baleys, bundle of twigs for flogging, Libel 426. 
ballade royal, Hawes 1318*. 

ballyuis, bailiffs, Garl. 514*. 

bankettyng, a. festal, Cavend. 1379. 
bansshid, banished, FaPrin. F 18, G 231, H 27. 
bararag, Garl. 235*, 245. 

baratows, tricky, Garl. 667. 

barbellis, fish of the carp-tribe, Garl. 655. 
barbican, outer defence of a castle, Garl. 1364. 
Bare, Bar, Hardyng 92. 


barm, bosom, FaPrin. B 146*. 

base organes, Hawes 1412*. 

basse, low, Cavend. 1165. 

basshid, was abashed, Orl. xvii:11. 

bastard, a sweet Spanish wine, Libel 53. 

bee a small fortress, a barricade? FaPrin. 

basylyske, basilisk, Ripley 169*, 

batail, armed force, FaPrin. D 25. 

batallous, warlike, Dial. 592. 

bate, to check? Garl. 27*;—-s. bait, Ship 546; — 
batyng, reducing, Ecl. prol. 79. 

baudye, bawdy, coarse, dirty, Prohib. 28, Cav- 


end. 44. 

bawme, balm, Thebes 17, FaPrin. D18, Garl. 668. 

be, by, Walton A 8, C 34, E 6, 91, 102, Churl 
153, Thebes 113, 166, FaPrin. A 95, B 64, 119, 
136, D 58, E 3, G 165, 265, 279, Orl. ix:6, 
Prohib. 45. 

beatyfie, to beautify, Cavend. 111. 

bebled, covered with blood, Walton B 21. 

it became, i.e; (what) became of it? Garl. 1216. 

is become, i.e., (what) has become of it? Fa- 
Prin. C 20*, 43, Libel 36, Nevill 834. 

bed, v. bade, Garl. 571. 

bede, to offer, Lickp. 70. 

bedleem, Bethlehem, Horns 54. 

beeldyng, building, FaPrin. C 30. 

beet, to beat, Walton A 316. 

Begging letters, see MaReg. 417ff., To Somer, 
To Carpenter, Roundel 1, LettGlouc. 

Beginnings of Lines alike, Cavend. 232*. Be- 
ginning, mode of, Thebes 1*, Cavendish 1. 

begone, begun, Garl. 686. 

behight, promised, Dance 239, Mass 92. 

behove, s. need, Cavend. 18. 

bekke, beak, nose, Thebes 169*. 

bellewedir, bellwether, Dance 490*. 

beldyng, building, FaPrin. C 3, Garl. 589. 

belluynge, bellowing, Garl. 24. 

ben, bene, v. are, Dance 635, Shirley II:40, 
Libel 36, etc. 

benome, stupefied, rendered helpless. The 
past part. of O. E. deniman, in Mod. Eng. 
erroneously treated as ““‘benumbed’’, Libel 38. 

beo, beon, Shirley’s spelling of o. “be”. 

ber, to bear, FaPrin. K 56. 

berall, beryl, Hawes 351. See birall. 

berd, beard, Cavend. 1237*. 

bere, bier, Orl. xiii:7;—beer, Ecl. 393. 

berefte, taken away, Libel 495. 

berthen, burden, Dance 136, Mass 157. 

beseched, besought, Hawes 4373. 

beseene, besein, Dance 446*, Garl. 483, 1054; 
see Orl. xvi:12. 

beseke, to beseech, FaPrin. K 9, Garl. 56, 215, 
818. See byseeke. 

besi, diligent, FaPrin. G 251. 

bestad, pressed by circumstance, Garl. 814. 

besynesse, earnest effort, Walton A 141, Fa- 
Prin. A 275, Garl. 1377. 

bet, bete, beat, beaten, MaReg. 434, Libel 222, 
Garl. 41, 663. 


556 SELECT GLOSSARY 


bet, bette, better, Bedford 9, Churl 377, Thebes 
145, 151, 172, Dance 645, FaPrin. A 467, Orl. 
xxii:11. 

beth, are, Pallad. 83, Libel 349, 521 ;-imperat. 
pli., be, Churl 368, Thebes 97, Orl. xxiii:9. 

bepynke, to devise, contrive, Walton B 9. 

betid, happened, Libel 185. 

bett, beaten, FaPrin. K 47. 

Bewford, Beaufort, Hardyng 52*. 

bexample, by example, FaPrin. C 126. 

bi, from? Orl. xxii:9, See by. 

Bibliographies; see Reference Lists; see for 
Lydgate, p. 98, for Orleans, pp. 215 ff. 

bide, i.e., bye, to endure, Ecl. 711. 

bifru(n)s, two-faced, Hawes 4216*. 

biheest, promise, Dial. 598. 

bihoueth, it is necessary, Dance 168. 

bileven, to remain, Dance 93 

bille, a written composition, LettGlouc. 49. 

bilt, built, FaPrin. G 260. 

biraft, biraught, bereft, Orl. xiii:32, xv:5. 

birall, byral, beryl, Churl 5650935 Garl. 467. 
See berall. 

bit, biddeth, MaReg. 280, Dance 269. 

bitake, to recommend, Dial. 789. 

biwepen, to bewail with tears, FaPrin. A 235. 

biwreie, to betray, reveal, Dial. 599. 

Black Death, see p. 10; see note Cavend. 119. 

blasinge, Ship 509, 515*. 

blasyng, Hawes 4230*, see 3169. 

ble, countenance, Garl. 1379. 

blenkardis, men with blinking eyes, dullards, 
Garl. 604. 

blent, deceived, FaPrin. A 166, Cavend. 151. 

blere, v. Libel 342*. 

blere-eyed, with eyes tear-dimmed, Churl 187. 

bleuh, blew, FaPrin. G 147. 

blew, blue, Hawes 335. 

blis, to bless, Walton A 49. 

blo, livid, Garl. 1366. 

blont, blunt, Nevill 34. 

blowe, to break wind, Thebes 112; see Garl. 
604*. 

blyue, soon, quickly, Dial. 542, MaReg. 280, 
Churl 10. 

bocase, Boccaccio, Burgh 21, Hawes 1291. 

Boccaccio, see Fall of Princes, pp. 150 ff.; see 
Gar]. 827 ff*. 

Bochas, Boccaccio, FaPrin. A 2, 64, 114, 120, 
141, 150, 269, 423, 469, G 27, H 2, K 37, Garl. 
365. See bocase. 

bocher, butcher, Ship 566. 

bodkyns, daggers, FaPrin. E 54*. 

boece, Boethius, FaPrin. A 291, Shirley 1:27. 

Boethius, see Walton’s translation, pp. 39 ff.; 
see FaPrin. H, p. 185; see Burgh 16. See Boys. 

boked, equipped with books, Pallad. 96. 

boklersbury, Bucklersbury, (a London street), 
LettGlouc. 43*. 

bole, Boole, a bull, the constellation Taurus, 
Thebes 2. 

bondes, boundaries, Walton D 58, 63. 

bone, a request, Walton A 194. 


bonechife, bonchief, good fortune; the con- 
trary of mischief, Walton A 256. 

bone homs, Bonshommes, Garl. 1428*. 

boos, a boss, ornamental knob, Thebes 85. 

boost, boastfulness, FaPrin. C 58, 59. 

bootte, bote, a resource, remedy, Dance 193 
FaPrin. D 3, Garl. 377, Cavend. 1418. 

bordure, border, Walton A 33d). 

bore, born, Dance 586, Lickp. 125. 

born, borne, Pallad. 30. 

borowe, to redeem, Dance 358;-to sell on credit? 
Libel 393, 427, (see note 388). 

borowis, boroughs, towns, FaPrin. D 117. 

Pome, borwith, borrowed, borrows, MaReg. 


boryall, Boreal, northern, Garl. 261. 

bost, outcry, Libel 173*. 

bot, bot if, see but; ee Hardyng 69, 103. 
bothes, both, FaPrin. B 1 

bottyne, booty, (Fr. en Orl. xix:9. 
botum, a bottom or clew of thread, Garl. 783. 
botyth, booteth, avails, Cavend. 1265 
bounsis, bounces or bounds, Garl. 1281. 
ponies; see Bycorne 88*, Dance 197, FaPrin. 


bourde, to jest, Ecl. 43; —a jest, Ecl. prol. 99. 

bourder, a jester, Ecl. 665. 

bowes, boughs, Nevill 428. 

bowgy, bulgy, Roundel 3. 

bown, ready, “bound”, Libel 195. 

bowns, bang! Garl. 618. 

boy, s. menial, Ecl. 355.* 

Boys, Boethius, FaPrin. H 3, 6, etc., Garl. 309. 

boysters, boisterous, Garl. 20. 

boystously, boisterously, Thebes 30. 

boyueer, boveer, rustic churl, Churl 266, 355. 

Braban, Brabant, Libel 492, 498, 508, 528. 

bracers, Garl. 189*. 

brake, asnare, Cavend. 1220* ; —was disturbed, 
Nevill 213. 

Bae to brawl, wrangle, Ecl. 401, 907, Garl. 


Basile written by error for brotil, brittle, 
Libel 558*. 

at a brayde, nS Nevill 70. 

brayed, Hawes 4364*. 

brede, breadth, Garl. 1503. 

bremis, bream, (a kind of fish), Garl. 655. 

brend, fiery? Walton A 307*. 

brenne, etc., to burn, Walton A 210, 235, B 27, 
D 17, Mass 110, Hawes 121, 233, 671, Nevill 
dial. 28. 

brent, burnt, Dial. 499, Churl 178, Hardyng 
27, Libel 171, Garl. 1293. 

brest, the breast, Dance 260. 

breteyne, Britain, FaPrin. A 377. 

brettaygne, Britain, Epithal. 53. 

breuiacion, shortening, Hawes 682. 

breuiate, v. and a., abbreviate, Hawes 686, 
Ecl. 788, 1071, 1102. 

brevely, briefly, Churl 20, Garl. 1070, etc. 

bribour, a rascal, robber, "FaPrin. G 308, 319. 

bride, briddes, etc. , bird, etc., Churl 39, 72, etc. 


AND FINDING LIST 557 


bridle lead, Epithal. 88*; see Cavend. 1174, 
1348*, MaReg. 78*. 

Brigges, Bruges, Libel 432. 

Bristowe, Bristol, Ecl. 317. 

briton, Britain, Burgh 46, Garl. 405. 

broche of Thebes, FaPrin. A 322-3*. 

brodered, embroidered, Ship 550. 

broisid, bruised, Garl. 619. 

broisours, ? bruisers, ruffians, Garl. 667. 

broke, Thebes 96*. 

broken, see Garl. 785*. 

Broken backed lines, see p. 21, p. 84-5. 

bronte, brunt, FaPrin. G 119. 

brotilnesse, brittleness, fragility, FaPrin. D 24. 

Browne, William, his MSS, p p. 58-59. 

Brutes, of Brut, Epithal. 36", Sete E 68, see 
Garl. 405. 

Brutus, Walton C 22*. 

Brutus Cassius, FaPrin. E 63*, Cavend. 1130; 
see Walton B 22. 

brutyd, bruited, renowned, Garl. 155, 405, 

brydilless, without bridle, MaReg. 78*, 

brynnynge, burning, Ship 8462. 

buckishe, lascivious, Ecl. 724. 

bull, (see bole), Morley 4. 

bullyons, metal knobs as ornaments, Garl. 1143. 

burbly, Churl 55*. 

Burboyne, Bourbon, Hardyng 86*. 

Burdeus, Bordeaux, Ecl. 315. 

burgeis, burgess, Dance 297, Garl. 514. 

burne, burnt, Garl. 41. 

burris, raised rings, Garl. 787. 

business, effort, Hawes 1337. 

busy, error for base, Hawes 331. 

but, FaPrin. A114, read bit, i.e., biddeth. 

but, but if, unless, Walton A 177, 192, C 24, 
D ST MaReg. 57, 127, 129; Dial. 637, 810, 
Churl 1385 Dance 399) FaPrin. A 326, Orl. 
xxii:5, Hardyng 19, 60, 96, Libel 100, 107, 254, 
547, Ship 96, Garl. 119, 146, 439, 769, Old: 

but though, unless, Orl. xvi:27. 

buttunis, buttons, knots, Garl. 787. 

buxom, obedient, Dial. 687; see Roundel 2. 

by, according to, Libel 521; about, Hawes 126; 
—he, Libel 532 

by and by, in sequence, Dance 542, FaPrin. A 
"137, Shirley I1:6, Ecl. 1135, Garl. 323, Morley 
209*. —immediately, Cavend. 1245. 

by caws, because, Lickp. 123, Garl. 60. 

by cock, parde, Lickp. O33 

Bycorne, see Bycorne and Chichevache, p.113. 

byde, to await, Garl. 98. 

bydynge, existence, dwelling-place, Ship 7016. 

bye, to buy, Lickp. 53, 69, 75, 79, 103, Libel 
a 397, 445, 508, Nevill dial. 39, 49, Ecl. 173, 


bsfit, befell, Thebes 70. 

bygonde, beyond (the sea), Dial. 566. 

byll, piece of writing, Reproof 32, Garl. 1421. 
see bille. 

byholde, to behold, Walton B 139. 

byknowen, recognized, Walton E 77. 

byleuyd, believed, Reproof 61. 


benepen, beneath, Walton A 329, 336; see 
Lickp. 119. 

byrnston, brimstone, Garl. 625. 

byse, dull blue, Garl. 1136, Cavend. 106. 

byseeke, to beseech, MaReg. 411. See beseeke. 

byseye, (see beseene), MaReg. 142. 

bysynes, business, matter, Dance 303. 

bytwix, bytwyne, between, Walton A 151, 230, 
Kpithal. 196, Libel 192. 

bywette, bewet, Walton A 388. 

by yonde, beyond, Garl. 488. 


caas, cas, case, FaPrin. E 46, G 102, etc. 

caball, horse, Ecl. 128. 

cace, case, matter, Hawes 119. 

cacheth, chaseth? FaPrin. K 31*. 

cadence, FaPrin. K 4*. 

Cadmus, Ecl. 879. 

Caesar, Julius, Epithal. 149, FaPrin. A 365, 
C 15, Ecl. 1084, 1087 ff., Cavend. 1126- 32, 
Cavend. epit. 5, 31, Wades 141 ff.; his tragedy, 
pp. 176 ff. 

caduke, transitory, Ecl. 786. 

calcydony, chalcedony, Garl. 587. 

calcys, Prohib. 19*. 

caldy, Chaldaean, Garl. 585. 

Calise, Calais, Pallad. 44. 

Calliope, Walton A 58*, Epithal. 181, FaPrin. 
A 457, D 9, Cavend. 65*, 67, Garl. 1121. 

Calpe, Ship 6972*. 

camamel, camomile, Garl. 962. 

camous, Ecl. 688*. 

can, knows, knows how, Dial. 565, Dance 218, 
571, Mass 21, Ship 212;—accomplishes, Ecl. 
883; —written for gan, did, FaPrin. A 46. 

Canace, her letter to Macaire, FaPrin. B;—a 
mountain, Burgh 45* 

canvas, Libel 153. 

Canywike, the name of a London street, Lickp. 


82*. 
Capell, Ecl. 441*. 
cappadoce, Cappadocia, Ship 6972. 
captacions, ornaments, pleasing artifices, Garl. 
799. 


carders, card players, Garl. 602. 

carectis, characters, letters, Garl. 585. 

carfull, full of care; Orl. xiii:13; —woeful, Garl. 
1228; see carfull. 

cariage, transportation, Walton E 125. 

carl, rustic churl, Churl Ban Ship 8437, etc. 

Caron, Charon, Garl. 1 

carpe, to talk, *Churl O78, 337, Ecl. 266, 344, 
Ecl. prol. 7. 

Carpenter, Hoccleve to, p. 67. 

carres, see carrys. 

carrikes, large ships, Libel 324. 

carrys, land routes, Libel 517, 549. 

Cartage, Carthage, Mass 183. 

cassander, Garl. 1008*. 

cast, cast him, etc., to intend, Churl 33, 80, 
174, 363, Bycorne 44, FaPrin. A 100, G 312, 
Orl. xvi: 17, Hardyng 75, Libel 29 —to con- 
sider, Nevill 156, 224. 


558 SELECT GLOSSARY 


castell, Castile, Libel 55, 
castinge, Garl. 786*. 
casuelte, chance, Garl. 1373. 
catch, caught, FaPrin. G 22*, 165, Cavend. 211. 
Cathalons, Catalans, Libel 505. 
Catoun, Cato, Walton C 23, FaPrin. C 24, G 
269, Ecl. 1091, Garl. 123, Cavend. epit. 23. 
causa, cause, because, LettGlouc. 6, FaPrin. 
G 125, Nevill dial. 40. 

for causa, because, Walton A 139. 

Caxton, pp. 14, 35, 96; see Thebes 55-6 

cayles, ninepins, Nevill dial. 47*. 

caytiff, captive, Orl. xiii:6;—see Ship 464. 

ceesse, to cease, Epithal. 44 

cely, (silly), ‘poor’, Churl 83, Bycorne 124, 
Orl. xv:6. 

celydony, Prohib. 59*. 

cent, scent, Hawes 342. 

cercle, circle, Walton E 143;—a nautical in- 
strument, Ship 6983. 

ceriousli, serially, FaPrin, A 135. See notes 
Shirley 1:26, Morley 209. 

Cerberus, Ecl. 873. 

certys, certainly, Mass 96, etc. 

cessen, to cease, Mass 82;—to cause to cease, 
Walton A 196, B 6. See sese. 

Cesyll, Sicily, Ship 6968. 

chaffare, merchandise, bargain, Libel 65, 441, 
526, etc. 

chaier, see chare. 

chance, lot, Dance 53, FaPrin. E 82, Hawes 19*. 

chapytles, chapters, Shirley II:7. 

charbonclis, carbuncles, Horns 10*, Garl. 1144. 

chare, chaier, chayre, chariot, FaPrin. E 75, 
Burgh 51, Orl. xix:2, Morley 20, 48. But see 
chayre. 

charet, carriage, Ecl. 199. 

charge, responsibility, Dance 206, 272, Ship 
6950, 8442, Ecl. 188, 190, 194, 359, 385, Cav- 
end. 97; —load, Ship 56, 6933; —expense, Garl, 
570. 

charge, to make responsible, Dance 270;—to 
consider, Epithal. 30*; —to load, Libel 240. 

charged, loaded, Libel 72, 262, 494, Ship 512;— 
laid in rest, Hawes 4313 

chartereux, a monk of the Charterhouse,Dance 


347. 

chat, talk, Ship 13852, Ecl. 473. 

Chaucer, see Gen. Introd. 5, 11-12, 14, 18, 19, 
21, 24, 26, 29, 31, 32. See Walton introd., Hoc- 
cleve introd., Lydgate introd., Churl introd., 
Bycorne introd., Thebes introd., FaPrin. introd., 
—See Hoccleve’s stanzas to him ,»p. 74; portrait, 
se2 note on Praise of Chaucer 4995: see FaPrin. 
A 246, ibid. 275* ff. for list of his works; 
see introd. to FaPrin. B and H, see K 19-21, 
34-41; see Shirley 1:29-34; see Reproof 19; see 
Hawes 1263 ff. and note on 1261; see Garl. 388, 
414-427, 1079. See under Griselda, Troilus, 
Wife of Bath. 

chaumpartye, Bycorne 41*. 

chaunge, read chaunce, i.ec., cast of dice, lot, 
Dance 275. 


chayre, seat, ae aes Garl. 753, Cavend. 1240; 
—car, Morley 33 , 44, 48. 

chebri place, Burgh 43°, 

to say checkmate, to call a halt, defeat, Dance 
ae FaPrin. A 182, D 52*, Cavend. 161, 1237, 

cheertee, Roundel 2*. 

chemeras, chimeras, Garl. 1296. 

chepe, a bargain, Lickp. 84; —a London street, 
Cheapside, Lickp. 72. 

chere, countenance, bearing, Walton A 347, 387, 
E 65, Churl 79, 296, Bycorne 94, Dance 90, 
121, 372, 391, 621, Thebes ioe FaPrin. B 137, 
D 45, G 81, "197" , 200, Burgh 49, Pallad. A4, 
Mass 84, Hawes 107, Ship 13816, Ecl. 893, Garl. 
691, 1430. 

chere, entertainment, Hawes 442, 4374,?4449, 
Garl. 398, Cavend. 1379. 

cherice, to cherish, MaReg. 282. 

chese, to choose, Walton A 135, Churl 143, 
Thebes 133, Reproof 35, Libel iv 

chesyng, choosing, Orl. xvii:15. 

SaEee bargain, goods, Dance 404,Libel 

Chichevache, see pp. 113 ff. 

as ga chief, especially, Libel 98. See MaReg. 


Chimer, Chimera, Ecl. 880. 
chippe, ship, Dance 264. 
EPOOVe: Chirburgh, Cherbourg, Dial. 567, 


vee churl, Churl passim, Hawes 1298, Ship 
111, 8497. 


chose, chosen, FaPrin. A 408, G 75, 132, Mass 


eee children, Mass 150. 

chynchy, stingy, MaReg. 136. See introd. to 
Bycorne and Chichevache. 

chyne, FaPrin. C 76*. 

Cicero, see Tullius. See Cavend. epit. 9. 

ciex, Ceyx, FaPrin. A 304*. 

Cintheus, Apollo, Garl. 681*. 

Circes, Circe, FaPrin. C 92. 

circumstance, detail, Cavend. 1425. 

Cirenes, see Sirens. 

Citero, Citheron, Burgh 7*. 

Citharon, FaPrin. K 51*. 

cithe, read tilthe, FaPrin. G 221*. 

Cithera, Venus, FaPrin. D 13. 

citheryn, a. citron, Churl 235. 

clappid, etc., to prate, MaReg. 394, Bycorne 32. 

clarified, made famous, Hawes 1105. 

clarry, wine mixed with honey, Walton B 8. 

claryonar, trumpeter, Garl. 233. 

clatter, to chatter, Hawes 742. See Garl. 241, 
1173. 

Cleopatras, FaPrin. G 287*. See Morley 142. 

clepen, clepid, clept, to call by name, to cry 
out, Walton A 168, 278, MaReg. 225, Dance 
489, Burgh 50, Shirley 1: 60,66, Orl. xviii:7, 
Libel 62. 

for clere, for clearness, Walton A307. Or for- 
clere, very clear? 


AND FINDING LIST 559 


clere story, Garl. 479*. 

clergi, clergye, learning, Walton E 32, FaPrin. 
G 133*, 150, Pallad. 97, Ecl. 662;—the clergy, 
Ship 572. 

Clio, Walton A 58*, Epithal. 181, FaPrin. D 10, 
Ecl. prol. 117. 

clipsen, to eclipse, Dance 13. 

cloke, veil of allegorical language, Nevill envoy 
14. See Churl 29* 

cloked, hid, veiled, Hawes 1297*, Garl. 1173. 
See Chur] 29*, FaPrin. G 46*. 

cloos, stronghold, territory? Dial. 576. 

Clotho, etc., Cavend. 1259 ff. 

clowdes, the heavens, Hawes 68. 

clowdy, veiled, Hawes 34, 664. See cloked. 

clypsyd, eclipsed, Epithal. 29. 

coast, part of the world, Hawes 4412, Ecl. 320. 
See coost. 

cochitos, Cocytus, the river or pit of hell, Garl. 
1302. 


cockatryce, Ripley 167*. 

Cobham, Eleanor, duchess of Gloucester, see 
pp. 143, 145. 

Codrus, a speaker in Barclay’s Eclogue iv. 

cokers, leggings, Ecl. 211. 

colage, collage, a college, an assembly, Hard- 
yng 126, Garl. 403, 417 

cole, coolness, Ship 57. 

colers, collars, Ship 512. 

colle, coal, Prohib. 27. 

collis passioun, Thebes 114, 1.e., colica pas- 
sio, the pain of colic. 

colour, a pretext, Libel 166, 383, Cavend. 1322; 
—color, FaPrin. G 33-35*;—a fable, Hawes 
740, 1297, see dedic. 41-2;—rhetorical orn- 
ament, Walton A 154, FaPrin. A 27, 278, 452, 
G 46*, K 4, Reproof 31, Hawes dedic. 25, 42, 
Cavend. 61*, 232*. 

colour, v. to disguise, Cavend. 1320, 1322. 

colour, the symbolism of, Epithal. 107-110, Ecl. 
prol. 107 ff. 

coloured, given a false appearance, Libel 387. 

ae Salutati, see p. 91; see note FaPrin. 

63. 
colyaunder, coriander, Garl. 1006; see Thebes 


com, can, Orl. xi:5*. 

comberaunce, encumbrance, difficulty, Pro- 
hib. 69. 

combreworldes, cumberers of earth, nuisances, 
MaReg. 225 

comicar, writer of comedies, Garl. 353. 

comen, common, Hawes 196. 

commen, common, Ripley 65, Hawes 185. 

commens, the common people, Hawes 182. 

com(m)on, to talk, discuss, Libel 181, Ship 
181*, Ecl. 472, 741, 743. 

commynalte, the communalty, Walton A 80. 

comons, the common people, FaPrin. H 14, 23, 
Libel 123, 523. 

comontye, the common people, FaPrin. 
A 207, Ship 234, 459. 

compace, to enclose, Ecl. 168. 

Compaigne, Campania, FaPrin. G 294, 


companable, compenable, in company, Nevil! 
11); —social, Ecl. 1011. 

Comparative, "double, Walton B 28, Hawes 144, 
Cavend. 1184. 

compassid, included, considered, Garl. 13. 

compendyous, etc., brief, briefly, FaPrin. 
A90, G 4, H 22, Shirley Il: 5, Nevill 876. 

competente, sufficient, Garl. 1060. 

complacience, luxury, Libel 337. 

compline, the last prayer-service of the day, 
after sunset, Churl 67. 

compownen, to reconcile, Walton E 42. 

Pom prpended Epithal. 83*. See Walton 

44, 


comprise, etc., to compose, describe, Pallad. 
, 41, Hawes 1292, Garl. 80;—to include, 

Ship 6944, Garl. 905. 

compyle, to collect, write, Hardyng 54, etc. 

comune, common, Walton A 314, Shirley 1:18. 

comyn, cummin, Thebes 118. 

comynly, in common, Walton D 20. 

concedo, see Ship 216*. 

conceit, opinion, thought, MaReg. 381, Dial. 
591, 601, 658, Hawes 206, Ship 167, Garl. 16; 
—device, plan, Garl. 798. 

concend, Ecl. 596*. 

conclusions, riddles, experiments, Dance 518. 

condescend, to agree, consent, Dance 537, 
LettGlouc. 2, Hawes 280, 4448, Nevill dial. 
12?, Garl. 232, 1110. 

condicioun, nature, disposition, Walton A 359, 
Garl. 609? or “classes of society’’?. 

conductis, conduits, FaPrin. D 9. 

conduyt, conduct, Nevill 206. 

confect, made up, Pallad. 69. 

confecture, compound, Garl. 110. 

confedred, confederate, Hardyng 9. 

confortatyff, remedy, LettGlouc. 11. 

conforth, comfort, Orl. vi:6. 

confrary, brotherhood, Mass 147. 

congruence, fitness, Garl. 52. 

coniecte, to guess, Garl. 729. 

connyng, ability, art, Reproof 15, 27, Garl. 
1208, Cavend. 108; —knowledge, Ship 175, 
Ecl. prol. 59, Garl. 140, ae 850; —a. wise, 
Cavend. 53. See cunnyn 

consayue, to think, FePrin. A 449, Hardyng 
102. 


consel, s. counsel, Pallad. 66. 

consentant, in agreement, Walton A 131. 

conseyt, opinion, Walton E 44, FaPrin. C 125, 
Reproof 63. See conceit. 

consistorye, place of assembly, assembly, Fa- 
Prin. E 50, G 278. 

consonant, harmonious, Ecl. 286. 

consuetude, custom, Mass 154. 

consuleere, consular, consul, FaPrin. G 75. 

contagious, injurious, Ecl. 556. 

contekk, contest, debate, Epithal. 20. 

content, fulfilled, paid up, Libel 418, 441. 

contesse, countess, Shirley I1:52. 

continuaunce, countenance, FaPrin. G 196. 

contraire, contrary, FaPrin. C 52, etc. 

contrarie, to oppose, Dance 156, 502. 


560 SELECT GLOSSARY 


contune, to continue, Churl 290, Thebes 140, 
FaPrin. A 62, 389*, Mass 13. 

conuersation, mode of life, life, Dance 533, 
Hawes 1287. 

conuysance, cognizance, Pallad. 55. 

convenable, suitable, Churl 262, Garl. 706. 
See couenable. 

convenience, fitness, Horns 60*, Nevill envoy 
15. 

convenient, suitable, Dial. 590*, Churl 16, 
Hawes 689, Cavend. 17. 

conveyance, Garl. 1172, 1211*;-style, Ecl. 264. 

conveyed, brought thither? Nevill 198. 

coole, cowl, Ecl. prol. 112. 

cooper, copper, Cavend. 226; see note on 225, 
and see Hawes 293*. 

coost, coste, place, country, Walton A 179. See 
coast, costis.—euery coost, on every hand, 
Dance 158. 

cope, Ecl. 447*, 1141*. 

copen, to buy, Lickp. 53. 

Copland, Robert. See under Nevill, p. 287. 

copper, see cooper. 

copyntanke, Ship 559*. 

corage, spirit, temper, strength, Walton A 310*, 
Churl 45, 64, 82, Dance 436, LettGlouc. 54, 
FaPrin. A 395, B 70, D 68, G 16, 52, Reproof 
38, Mass 103, 151, Nevill 13, etc., Ecl. 969, 
Garl. 66, 844, 1275, Cavend. 204, 1143, epit. 6. 
See courage. 

coral, Hawes 4224*. 

corde, to accord, Garl. 88. 

cordeler, a Cordelier, a Franciscan friar of the 
strict rule, girt with the knotted cord, Dance 
56a 

cordewayn, Spanish goat-leather from Cordova, 
Libel 133. See Sir Thopas 21. 

coriandre, Thebes 118; see Garl. 1006. 

corious, elaborate, Dance 672, FaPrin. C 30, 
Garl. 652. See curious. 

Cornix, Ecl. 195*, 798, 1136. 

corosyves, acids, Prohib. 8, 49. 

correcte? Libel 353*. 

Correct, request to, Churl 385, Dance 660, Fa- 
Prin. K 11, Shirley 11:71*, Cavend. 52*. 

Corson, Fcl. 859*. 

Cosmus, Cosmo de’ Medici, Ecl. 441*. 

cosse, a kiss, Orl. xx:1. 

Costantin, the Cotentin, Dial. 576*. 

costious, costly, Garl. 570. 

costis, places, FaPrin. F 13. See coost. 

cote, coot, (a waterfowl), Garl. 1346;—a coat, 
Ship 468. 

coth, disease, pestilence? Shirley I1:12*. 

cotidian, daily, daily fever, MaReg. 25, Lett- 
Glouc. 28*. 

cotis, cotes, cottages, Ship 8457. 

Cotteswold, Cotswold, the sheep-raising dis- 
trict of England, Libel 392. 

couched, packed in layers, Ecl. 393;—to lay, 
Cavend. 227. 

couenable, couenabill, fitting, Dial. 635, Garl. 
805. See convenable. 

eure no skyle, possessed no knowledge, Lickp. 


coule, cowl, Shirley 11:42. 

coulpable, culpable, Reproof 55. Seecoupable. 

coundight, conduit, Garl. 652. 

counten, to make up account, Dance 160,542. 

countirpeys, balance, counterpoise, LettGlouc. 
26, FaPrin. E 79, Reproof 18. 

countertails, counterstrokes, Libel 383*. 

countertayle, Bycorne 31*. 

countervayle, opposed weight, Chur! 315. 

counterwayng, balancing, Garl. 414; see 179. 

counterweiynge, comparable, Garl. 831. 

counteryng, singing an accompaniment to the 
melody or plain song, Garl. 699. 

coupable, culpable, Dial. 688, FaPrin. G 319. 

Cour Amoureuse, see p. 199 here. 

courage, Hawes 266, 4335, Nevill 118. See 
corage. 

cours, coarse, Ship 564. 

coursidhede, cursedness, Walton E 87. 

Court of Sapience, see Hawes 1301. Extracts 
from the poem, pp. 258 ff. here. 

couthe, kouth, could, Walton A 248, 303, 330, 
B 2, 6, 9, ?Horns 32*. Reproof 12 

couthe, known, FaPrin. G 204. 

covert, couerte, covered, Orl. xx:12;—of hid- 
den meaning, Hawes dedic. 42, Hawes 1389. 
See Churl 29*. 

crafty, expert, Hawes dedic.25, Ship 7008; — 
elaborate, Hawes 405, Ship 13683. See Ecl. 
346, etc. 

crakars, braggarts, Ship 37. 

crase, to break, Garl. 1187. 

Crassus, Nevill 834. 

crease, to increase, Cavend. 94. 

creauncer, tutor, Garl. 1199. 

credence, credit, dignity, Hardyng 87*. 

Cresseid, Cressida, Orl. xvi:10, Hawes 1276, 
Garl. 855. 

creste cloth, a linen fabric, Libel 153. 

Creusa, Morley 165. 

cristente, Christendom, Libel 149. 

croft, a small field, Orl. xix:10. 

erokfere, Prohib. 37*. 

crokyd, bent, FaPrin. D 65, Ship 113. 

cronell, coronal, Garl. 288. 

crowne, a tonsure, Ship 574. 

crudd, curds, Churl 124, Ecl. 423. 

cruddy, Hawes 62*. 

cunnyng, knowledge, FaPrin. A 432, Hawes 
449, 717, 730, 746, 748, 1100, 1332, 1343, Ship 
179, Ecl. 29, 275, 297, 334, etc. 

Cupide, Cupid, Dance 445, FaPrin. B 102, C 89, 
Nevill 11, 15, 21, 32, 39, 871, Garl. 291, Cav- 
end. 1330;—martyrs of, Mass 191*. 

cure, care, attention, pains, MaReg. 261, 309, 
Churl 124, 327, Dance 205, FaPrin. G 251, 
Pallad. 40, 122, Libel 351*, Hawes 117*, 160, 
434, Ship 6950, 6991, Ecl. 162, Garl. 912. 

curiositee, rhetorical ornamentation, Ecl. prol. 
106. 

curious, intricate, elaborate, Walton A 11, 
Ship 246, Ecl. 449, 825. See Morley 24. 

currishenes, dishonorable act, Orl. xx:10. 

curteys, courteous. 

custom, trade? LettGlouc. 23. 


AND FINDING LIST 561 


custoumable, accustomed, Mass 153. 

custumed, habitual, Bedford 8. 

cybacyon, Ripley 196*. 

Cypyoun, Scipio, Epithal. 154. 

cyrcunspeccyon, circumspection, Nevill 26. 

cyrcumstaunce, detail?, effort?, Nevill dial. 3. 
See NED meanings 6 and 7. 

Cyrus, Ecl. 1111. 

cytezyns, citizens, Ship 111, 8470. 

Cytheron, Mass 5*. 


.d., pence, Libel 409, 412, 413. 

dagardye, Libel 353*. 

daggid, slashed, cut in long points, Garl. 624. 

daliaunce, intercourse, talk, Walton A 361, Dial. 
706, Dance 189, Cavend. 1388. 

e, i.e., dan, dominus, as a title, Shirley 

II:39, 47; also Dane. 

Dante in English, see note on FaPrin. A 303. 

Dante as known to Lydgate, p. 93 here. 

Danys, the Danes, FaPrin. K 47. 

Daphnes, Daphne, Garl. 290, 297. 

Dares i aa Dares the Phrygian, FaPrin. 
Ret 


daring doo, Epithal. 129*. 

dasid, etc., to daze, Garl. 635, 728, 1356. 

dasild, dazzled, Garl. 1356. 

dastarddis, dullards sots, Garl. 190. 

daswed, dazed, Bedford 9. 

daunce, dance, Dance 24*, Orl. xi:9, Hawes 
1259, Cavend. 241, Morley SS 195: 

daunger, danger, FaPrin. F 17: ?G 161, Libel 
23;—tyranny, MaReg. 126*, Dance 455, Fa- 
Prin. A 63, Mass 86, Orl. v4, xx:6, 9, Ecl. 
1125;—bond to another’s power, Walton E 11, 
Churl 85, 114;—daungerous, Dial. 745. 

dawe, to be day, Thebes 129. 

dawbe, to mend, Ecl. 170. 

dawcokkis, male jackdaws, i.e., simpletons, 
Garl. 612. 

day, to die, Orl. xviii:23. 

dayneth, disdains, Ecl. 375. 

dayse, days, Reproof 19. 

De bien en mieulx, FaPrin. A 20*. 

in deade, indeed, Cavend. 174. 

deadly, profound, Hawes 92; —like death, Cav- 
end. 84, 1257;—ominous, Cavend. 1225, 1229. 

Dean of Powles, Ecl. 451*. 

Death. See Dance Macabre, Orl. xv*, Ecl. 983*, 

debarrid, stopped, Garl. 143. 

debated, abated, Ecl. 979. 

debily, Prohib. 25*. 

debonayr, gracious, Ripley 6. 

decertys, deserts, nes, Mass 96. 

decked, covered, Ecl. 6 

decke slut, Ship S5Be: 

declinall, declinable, Hawes 533. 

declination, downward course, Hawes 1404. 

declyne, to evade, FaPrin. G 115; —to incline, 
show favor, FaPrin. C 27. 

dede, did, Walton A 56, Thebes 58, FaPrin. Al, 
49, 209, 249, 273, 275, etc., Lickp. 124. 

dedis, deeds, Dial. 820*. 


deel, part, MaReg. 153, Epithal. 105; see dele. 

deemyng, judging, FaPrin. C 26. 

deen, to dye, Walton B 9. 

defye, to digest, Bycorne 42. 

degest, to get over the effects of, Cavend. 1243, 
(NED first case 1576); —ponder, Cavend. 
1427. 

degree, place, position, rank, Walton A 293, 
E 157, MaReg. 317, Dance 101, 491, FaPrin. 
A 67, pier Mass 28, Libel 88, Ship 474, 570, 
8519, Ecl. prol. 130, Ecl. 846, 861, Garl. 803, 
1082; 3——Wway, manner, Hawes 110.—in degree, 
in supremacy, Ecl. 634, 996; see 602. 

deide, died, FaPrin. C 70. 

deiect, to sink, Ecl. 549. 

deied, etc., died, etc., FaPrin. F 21, Orl. xvii:25. 

dekayed, ‘etc., to bring low, Ship 470, 572, Cav- 
end. 1157*. 

delate, to spread afar, publish, Ecl. 645. 

delavee, Roundel 2 

dele, part, bit, Walton A 158, E 147, Dance 
ie 408, Libel 101, 207, Cavend. 1135. See 


d 

delice, s. delight, Walton A 109. 

delicious, sensual, Ship 126*. See Cavend. 43. 

dell, vale, Walton E 70;—part, Walton D 12, 
Hawes 328. See dele, deel. 

demayn, domain, power, Cavend. 1344. 

demene, to manage, Orl. ix:3, Hawes 4363. 

demenaunce, demenynge, behavior, FaPrin. 
G 194, Garl. 996, 1152. 

demerites, Ship 51. 

Demophon, Morley 199. 

dempte, deemed, FaPrin. G 27. 

denay, to deny, Cavend. 146, Morley 90. 

Denyse, Dionysius, Morley 161*. 

depaint, adorned, depicted, FaPrin. B 106, 
Hawes 9, 459, 755. See dope ec 

depart, to part with, Ecl. 14, 818;—to divide, 
separate, MaReg. 133, Dance 483. 

depayseth, deprives of value, Walton C 17. 

depraue, to speak ill of, stain, MaReg. 171, 
FaPrin. A 447, Garl. 1240, Cavend. 1149. 

depured, purified, clear, Hawes 68h 33259347, 
108, 1264, 4220, etc. 

derayne, derrain, to decide, offer for decision, 
Bycorne 6, Garl. 1514. (Late Latin derationare. 

dere, to injure, Dial. 711. 

derified, derived, Hawes 1107. 

Pesenption by order, see Roundel 3*, Shirley 


descryve, to express, Epithal. 116. 

desere, to desire, Orl. xiv:12. See desier. 

desese, discomfort, FaPrin. G 247. 

desier, desire, Cavend. 102, 105. 

deteyee besmirched, MaReg. 340. See Libel 
- 


determine, to fix, assert, FaPrin. B 6, G 152. 

dette, dettour, debt, etc., Walton E 11, Dance 
159, Shirley 11:66. 

deu, due, FaPrin. G 153, Garl. 423. A deu, 
Adieu, see Dial. 504; see note Dance 64. 

deueere, devoir, duty, FaPrin. F 5. 


562 SELECT GLOSSARY 


deuelway, Thebes 162*, Garl. 629. 

deuise, describe, Churl 334, Dance 340, 483, 
etc., Ship 598;—arrange, Libel 215, ?Garl. 
1387; —manage, Mass 26;—-s. device, fancy, 
Dance, 220, 436, 483, Garl. 442*, 1459;— 
fashion, Cavend. 248. 

deuised, given, Dance 179. 

deuoyed, deprived, Nevill 37*. 

deviant, one who turns aside, Ripley 6*. 

Devices, see Mottoes. For Shirley’s device see 
pp. 192-3 here. 

dewren, etc., to endure, Orl. xii:33, xiii:11. 

dewte, duty, Orl. xvii:19, Garl. 212. 

deye, to die, FaPrin. B 26, 33, 84, 128, Orl. vi:8, 
xxi:14. 

deynous, disdainful, proud, Dance 299, 364. 

deynte, dignity, value, FaPrin. A 359. 

Diana, FaPrin. C 87, Garl. 303. 

diascorides, Garl. 1392", 

dictes, FaPrin. G 225. See dite. 

dide, died, Dial. 751. 

Dido, Orl. xvi:10. See Dydo. 

diffautis, wrongdoings, FaPrin. B 122, G 160, 

87 


287. 

diffied, disintegrated, FaPrin. G 329. 

diffieng, defying, refusing, FaPrin. C 60. 

diffuse, difficult, obscure, Ecl. prol. 71, Garl. 
111, 338. 

dight, set to, prepare, Walton D 71, Lickp. 124. 

digne, worthy, FaPrin. F 26, G 131. 

digression, decadence of moral quality, Hawes 
145. For the rhetorical ‘“digressio” see Gen. 
Introd. p. 25. 

dilacioun, delay, Dance 314. 

Diodorus Siculus, see notes Ship 162, Garl. 1463. 

Dirige, dirge, Ship 13878*. 

dirke, dark, Mass 128. 

dirkid, darkened, FaPrin. D 21, 57. 

discharge, to unload, Libel 70, 240, 491, Ship 
6934, Garl. 720;—to unburden, Cavend. 153; 
—to excuse, Garl. 1326; to make void, FaPrin. 
B 40.—s. vindication, Garl. 213, 1124. 

discommend, to dispraise, Garl. 1236. 

discrive, to describe, Walton A 303, Dance 294. 

discure, to discover, FaPrin. G 90, 100, Garl. 
725. See note Dance 311. 

discusse, dyscus, to decide, determine, allot, 
Nevill 24, 873, Ship 6993, Garl. 865. 

disese, discomfort, evil case, Walton A 255, 352, 
MaReg. 414, Hawes 4285, 4399. See desese. 

disespeirid, in despair, FaPrin. D 47. 

disgysyd, decked, adorned, Garl. 38. 

dishonest, wretched, shameful, Ecl. 1097. 

disioynt, ill-wrought, Pallad. 18;—-s. evil case, 
misery, Mass 75. 

disnull, v. destroy, Hawes 720. 

dispence, excuse myself, Pallad. D 4. 

dispense, s. expense, Horns 55. 

disporte, to give pleasure, Dance 324; —s. pleas- 
ure, Pallad. 35. 

dissert, desert, worth, MaReg. 272. 

disseruid, deserved, FaPrin. G 304. 

disseuere, to depart, pass away, Dance 310. 

disteyn, to stain, Libel 47. See desteyn. 


distincyon, a division of a composition, Garl. 
1434. 

distresse, trouble, pains, Shirley 1:95. 

distryed, destroyed, Walton Av25er 

dite, dyte, ditijs, etc., “dicta”, literary com- 
positions, FaPrin. A 256m 352, 456, G 55*, 
K 16, Nevill dial. 18, Garl. 360°, Cavend. 66, 
67. 


ditie, ditte, ditty, Ecl. 48, 351, etc. 

diynge, dying, Dance 248. 

do, s. doe, Garl. 1352 

do, dede, doon, etc., 1)causative, as in Chaucer; 
see e.g., Dance 339, Shirley 1:17. 2) auxil- 
lary; see e.g.,Walton "A 225, Thebes 58*, Dance 
136*, FaPrin. A 303, G 136, ete. 3) indepen- 
dent verb; see e.g., Walton A 56, Dial. 613*, 
FaPrin. K’ 37, 41. 

do forth, Dial. 524, Pallad. A 6*. 

do it upon you, Libel 258%. 

do on, put on, don, Ship 558. 

document, Hawes 292*. 

doke, duck, Churl 360. 

dolven, dug, buried, Dance 558, Shirley I:22. 

dom, dumb, Ecl. 489. See dum. 

domas, damask, Ship 173. 

dome, doomys, etc., doom, judgment, FaPrin. 
E 25, F 7, Garl. 1470, Cavend. 155. 

domefying, Dance 293%, FaPrin. A 299*, 

dominacion, domain? Hawes 416. 

dompe, to be downcast, Cavend. 241. See 
dumpe. NED 1530 first. —s. a depressed or 
musing state, Cavend. 1223, 

domyne, to have power, Hawes 229. 

dongel, dunghill, Churl 360. 

donne, dun, FaPrin. K 31, Hawes 299. 

dool, dolor, FaPrin. B 67, Mass 120, 130. 

doomys, see dome. 

dopeynt, Thebes 16. See depaint. 

dorste, dared, Walton D 15, etc. 

dotrellis, Garl. 635*. 

Double Compar. and Superl., Walton B 28*, 

FaPrin. C 19, 50, Ecl. 867, Cavend. 1184. 

doublenes, Hawes 436, 12775 Gasl, 1175. 

doubletys, imitations, Horns 13*. 

doubt, doubtaunce, dread, Hawes dedic. 45, 
Hawes 5, 103, Ecl. 169. 

doubty, dreadful, Hawes 359. 

dought, fear, Cavend. 212. 

doughtyd, feared, Cavend. 147, 212, 1167. 

doutfull, uncertain, Walton A 313. 

drad, dreaded, Dance 491. 

draff, s. refuse, Churl 256, 258. 

dragge, drug, LettGlouc. 12*, 55. 

drames, ?drama-writers, Ecl. 689*. 

drape, etc., to weave into cloth, Libel 102, etc. 

draughtes, attempts, works, Hawes 1312,1351. 

drauh, draw, FaPrin. C 64. 

draw, to tend, approach, Churl 260, Thebes 
170, FaPrin. H 1, Lickp. 73;—to amount, 
Libel 543. 

drawe along, to protract, draw out, Walton 
A 288, C 33, Churl 74. 

drede me, have fear, Dance 98. 

dreepyng, drooping, FaPrin. C 88. 


AND FINDING LIST 563 


drempt, dreamed, FaPrin. E 96. 

Dress, extravagance in, see pp. 110-11. 

dresse (one’s self), to prepare, set about, under- 
take, direct, Walton D 26, Dance 300, 611, 
626, FaPrin. A 449, D 72, E 25, G 3, 51, 65, Orl. 
xix:14, 27, xx:11, Libel 547, Ship 6953, Garl. 
22-1312. 

dreye, dry, Thebes 164. 

dribbis, to dribble, slaver, Garl. 635. 

drone, lower tube of a bagpipe, Ecl. 27. 

dropsy, see Ecl. 895*. 

drouh, drew, i.e., translated, FaPrin. K 28. 

drouh him to, adhered to, FaPrin. G 269. 

dud, did, Churl 63. 

dulce, sweet, Cavend. 118. 

dum, dumb, Garl. 82. See dom. 

dumpe, fit of abstraction or depression, Garl. 
15, 728. See dompe. 

dure, door, Garl. 1402;—». to endure, Mass 12, 
Libel 343, Hawes 4343. 

durre, door, Garl. 1073. 

duskyth, v. dims, Cavend. 223. 

dy, die, Orl. xiii:22. 

dya, s. LettGlouc. 12*. 

dyane, the moon, Diana, Hawes 1404, 4218. 
See Garl. 303. 

dyapenthe, Hawes 1414*. 

Dydo, Dido, Epithal. 73, Mass 182. See Dido. 

dyetesseron, diatessaron, Hawes 1414*. 

dyffautes, faults, defects, FaPrin. B 122. 

dygne, worthy, Mass 164. 

dyleccyon, delight, Nevill dial. 25. 

dymeynet, demeaned, Orl. viii:2. 

Dymostenes, Demosthenes, Garl. 130, 152, 
155, 167. 

dyne, to die, Libel 522. 

dynne, to dine, Cavend. 122. 

Dyogenes, Garl. 129. 

dyopason, Hawes 1413. 

dyscomfet, discomfited, Orl. iii:7. 

dyscusse, to decide, Nevill 24, 873. See dis- 
cusse. 

dysese, discomfort, unhappiness, FaPrin. B 18. 
See desese. 

dysour, dice-player, Garl. 629. 

Cysseuyd, deceived, Prohib. 66. 


ear, ere, Ecl. prol. 61. 

earst, erst, Ecl. 33, 1053, 1100. 

Earth upon Earth, alluded to in closing summary 
of Hawes. See ed. for EETS, and Wells, p. 387. 

ebb, s. FaPrin. D 69*, Cavend. 188. 

ebounden, bound, Shirley 92: 

ebrew, Hebrew, Garl. 582. 

en , echoon, each one, Churl 109, FaPrin. 

41 


Ector, see Hector. 

Ecuba, Hecuba, Epithal. 74. 

Edmund, St., FaPrin. K 48. 

Education, see introd. to Hawes; see in Ref. List. 
Edward III, Libel 184 ff., Ecl. 523. 

Edward VL, Cavend. 1407. 

eende, end, FaPrin. G 256. 

effekke, effect, Thebes 170. 


effycace, efficacy, Nevill dial. 4. 

eft, again, afterwards, MaReg. 408, Libel 494, 
Shirley IT :16*, 88. 

efte sone, afterwards, then, Walton A 196, D 60, 
69, etc. 

egall, ae Epithal. 145, FaPrin. G 182. See 
Epithal. 134. 

eger, eager, Walton B 20. 

egloges, eclogues, Ecl. prol. 21*, 28, 76, 127, 
129: 


eied, eyed, equipped with eyes, FaPrin. A 383. 

eir, heir, Dance 238. 

eld, age, Walton A 267, 326, Morley 122. 

eldres, elders, Shirley Ley: 

elephant, Garl. 468. See oliphaunt. 

Eleyne, Helen of Troy, Horns 27*, Dance 452, 
Epithal. 78*, Orl. xvi:10, Garl. 876, Morley 
218, 220. 

eleuate, to extol, Hawes 762. 

elich, alike, Churl 48. 

elicon, Helicon, Burgh 7*. See Helicon. 

ellas, alas! Shirley I1:43. 

ellis, ellys, else, Dance 636, 641, 661, Shirley 
1:8, Orl. vi:4, Nevill 199, etc. 

Elizabeth, Queen, her transl. of Boethius, see 
Walton A 366*, B notes. 

eloquencyale, eloquent, Shirley 1:31. 

elthe, health, Mass 151. 

Elyconys, of Helicon, Garl. 74. 

embosid, foaming at the mouth, Garl. 24. 

ee adorned in raised patterns, Cavend. 
109. 

embrace, v. Dance 482*. 

eme, uncle, Hardyng 52, 80. 

emforth, according to, Pallad. 12. 

emispery, hemisphere, Hawes 67, 1256. 

emmet, ant, Ecl. 247. 

empier, empire, Cavend. 1134. 

emprice, emprise, s. undertaking, Dance 178, 
221, 655; —renown, Pallad. 38. 

enaured, gilded, adorned, Pallad. 67. 

enbateled, fortified, Garl. 570. 

enbesid, busied, Garl. 789. 

enbewtid, beautified, Garl. 852. 

enbissy, v. busy, Garl. 66. 

enbosid, embossed, Garl. 467. 

enbrawded, etc., embroider, Garl. 778, 892. 

enbrayd, ». braid, Garl. 773. 

enbulyoned, bejewelled? Garl. 478. 

enbybid, moistened, Garl. 676. 

enchace, drive away, FaPrin. D 91. 

encheson, occasion, Hardyng 122. 

encline, to decay, lose value, Hawes 4266. 

enclude, to hold together, Pallad. 68*. 

encouerde, covered, Garl. 1142. 

encrampisshed, cramped, bound, Garl. 16*. 

enderkkid, a. obscure, Garl. 108. 

endeuorment, endeavor, Garl. 794. 

endewe, ». discipline, Nevill dial. 13. 

endite, to write, Walton A 59, 155, 253, Ma- 
Reg. 298*, FaPrin. G 41, Orl. xii:8, 24, Hawes 
722, 1290, Nevill dial. 10, Ecl.681;—to dic- 
tate, Walton A 347;—to indict, Dance 492. 


564 SELECT GLOSSARY 


enduce, to induce, Nevill 220. 

endued, dewed, wet with tears, Hawes 437;— 
clothed, Garl. "1022, etc. 

enduringe, during, Garl. 823*. 

enduse, to adduce, Garl. 94, 1113. 

enflorid, decked with ornaments? Garl. 1138. 

enforced, stimulated, Walton E 53, 60, Churl 


apes him, attempting, Hawes 4411. See 
Ship 67. 

engalared, having galleries, Garl. 460. 

engladid, gladdened, Garl. 536. 

englasid, glazed, Garl. 479. 

englistered, glistened, Garl. 657. 

engrapid, hung with grapes, Garl. 650. 

engrosid, swollen, Garl. 335, 342, 349, etc. (So 
Dyce. First case NED, 1561) ;—written, Garl. 
1467; Tae Garl. 41. 

engyne, “ingenium’’,, ingenuity, Pallad. 85. 

enhabite, dwell, Libel 240. See Nevill dial. 16. 

enhachid, adorned, Garl. 40. 

enhardid, hardened, Garl. 306. 

enhaunce, overcome? Nevill 63;—to elevate, 
Ecl. 850. 

enlosenged, patterned in lozenges, Garl. 469. 

enmy, enemy, FaPrin. G 283. 

ennewed, renewed, Reproof 7, Garl. 389, 969. 

ennoy, annoy, Pallad. 60*. 

ennoynte, anointed, Hardyng 4, Pallad. 54. 

enormyte, flagrant wrongdoing, Ship 568, 602. 

enow, ynow, enough, Dance 336. 

enpauyd, paved, Garl. 466. 

enplement, Garl. 402*. 

enpreented, imprinted, LettGlouc. 56. 

enprise, charge?, bidding, Churl 333. 

enrailid, surrounded by a rail, Garl. 650. 

ensaumple, to give example to, Dial. 604;—s. 
example, Hawes 1294. 

enscrisped, crisped, curled, Garl. 289. 

ensensed, etc., to sprinkle with odor, Hawes 
11, 102 

enserched, searched out, Walton E 4. 

ensewe, to follow, ensue, Nevill 198, Garl. 321, 
390. See Ship 14, 62, 144, 215, 241, 603, 608, 
8517, Ecl. prol. 103. 

ensowkid, soaked, Garl. 23. 

enstore, provide, Bycorne 103. 

ensue, see ensewe. 

ensure, to assure, Orl. ix:11, Nevill 83. 

entachid, linked? Garl. 470. 

entakeled, furnished with (ship’s) tackle, Garl. 
545. 

entayle, quality, Churl 235. 

entaylled, adorned or carved, Cavend. 108. 

enteer, perfect, FaPrin. G74, K 18. See entere. 

entencioun, desire, intent, FaPrin. D 108. 

entend, to give attention to, Dance 328, Fa- 
Prin. A 13, Shirley I:1, Hawes 678, Ecl. ’rol. 
96; —to intend, Garl. 412, 426; 49 tend, 
Garl. 1109? 

entent, intention, Dance 33, 461, 531, 665, Fa- 
Prin. A 309, 428, B 155, G 97, Mass 10, 37, 
155, Reproof 32, Orl. ix:17, xvi:26, xxiii:10, 
Hawes 56, 430, Nevill 431, Cavend. 271; — 
attention, Lickp. 59. 


ententifely, attentively, Walton E 103, Hawes 
250, 1407, Nevill 204. 

enterchaungyng, interchanging, FaPrin. A 
125; 


entere, entire, Dance 659, FaPrin. G 74, Epi- 
thal. 178, Mass 1. See enteer. 

entered, interred, Shirley 11:51. 

enterement, interment, Garl. 1247. 

PRT RPRN ENS: endeavored, Gar]. 388, Ecl. prol. 
2. 


entremete, to take part in, meddle with, Wal- 
ton A 36, MaReg. 439. 

entyrmete, see entremete. 

ee to write down under headings, Mass 
165* 

enuawtyd, arched over, vaulted, Garl. 476. 

enuerdurid, made green, Garl. 660. 

enuolupid, enwrapped, MaReg. 245. 

enuy, envie, to try to rival, Hawes 1346. See 
Dance 241* 

enuyronde, environed, Nevill envoy 3. 

enuyrowne, around, Garl. 489. 

enuyuid, to enliven, kindle, Garl. 856, 1139. 

enveiyd, inveighed, ‘censured, Garl. 96. First 
case NED 1529. 

enviroun, round about, Dance 107. See en- 
uyrowne. 

Enyus, Ennius, Garl. 347. 

Eolus, Aeolus, Garl. 235, 1066. 

epitomis, brief writings, Garl. 1378. 

equypollent, of equal worth, Epithal. 151, 
Hawes 687. 

er, ere, Pallad. C 1. 

—er, rime on, Nevill 25-27. See -eth. 

eresy, errisy, heresy, Reproof 63, Hardyng 26. 

erkith me, “‘it irks me”, Garl. 1456. 

ernest, Shirley II:99*. 

ernestful, exacting?, MaReg. 293. 

erronyouse, misguided, Hardyng 15. First 
case NED 1512. 

errytyke, heretic, Hardyng 8. 

erst than, before, Garl. 1012. 

erste, first, Mass 30, Pallad. 118. 

ertly, earthly, Prohib. 86. 

erudice, Eurydice, Walton D 18, 64. 

es, Lat. aes, brass or copper, Prohib. 37*. 

eschape, escape, Hardyng 23. 

eschaunge, Pallad. A 4*. 

Eschines, Aeschines, Garl. 131, 135, 154, 157, 
166. 

escry, outcry, battle cry, Ecl. 943. See askry. 

escuse, excuse, Reproof 80. 

Esiodus, Hesiod, Garl. 328. 

Esope, Aesop, Ecl. 448*. 

Espirus, Hesperus, FaPrin. K 32. 

esploye, Fr. esploier, s’avancer, i.e., to put 
one’s self forward, Pallad. 58. 

estchepe, Eastcheap, a London street, Lickp. 
89. 


estate, class, rank. Thebes 20, Dance 573, Epi- 
thal. 146, FaPiin. A 128, 167, 177, 181, 447, 
Shirley 11:93, Ecl. 860, 1093, Garl. 54, 600, 
1204, 1255, Cavend. 48, 55, 156, 1187, 1269, 
1418;—higher rank, men of eminence, Churl 
17, FaPrin. A 46, 67, Hawes 190, Nevill 176, 


AND FINDING LIST 565 


Ship 235, Ecl. 909, Garl. 45, Cavend. 35, 37;— 
condition, Hawes 4300, Nevill 877;—dignity, 
FaPrin. E 51, Garl. 752, 1092. See state. 

cloth of astate, Garl. 484*, Cavend. 123. 

este, east, Walton A 133. 

ete, ate, Walton D 49. 

-eth, rime on, Hawes, stanza 105. 

etik, etiques, "flushed “hectic” dry fever, Dance 
398", LettGlouc. 27, 45. 

euasioun, escape, Garl. 154. 

Etymology, see Dial. 586*. 

euforbe, Libel 353*. 

Eumenides, Garl. 1290. 

ewre, to prosper, Orl. xii:31. See ure. 

exaumplaire, model, Dance 534. 

excelsitude, majesty, Hardyng 112. 

excesse, excess? access? Hawes 4421. 

exemplifye, to adduce as example, Hawes 677. 

Exione, Garl. 1367*. 

existent, Walton A 315*. 

expedient, Libel 453, Hawes 1412. 

expert, able, well-contrived, FaPrin. A 298. 

a cntyase, performing exploits, Nevill dial. 


Me cane, to tell, utter, FaPrin. A 303*, Hawes 
197, 326, Nevill 90, 142, Ecl. prol. 119, Cavend. 
117, 1137. 

in expresse, expressly, Walton A 143, E 113, 
Dance 269, Reproof 41, Shirley I1:28, Pallad. 
32, Hardyng 31. 

expreslye, Hawes 1300. 

exskus, excuse, FaPrin. B 101. 

exuberate, Ripley 134*, 164. 

exyte, excite, Ripley 82. 

ey, ever, Hawes 269. 

eye, ever, Lickp. 111;—to examine with the eye, 
Pallad. 88? 

at eye, at a glance, obviously, Pallad. 30, 386, 
480, Pallad. 32, 33. See Libel 262*. 

eyeghen, eyes, Epithal. 164, 167. 

eyne, eyes, Orl. xix:17. See iyen. 

eyre, air, Churl 22. 

eyther, either, or, Ripley 164, 167. 


faatal, see fatal. 

fable, see Churl 29*, Hawes dedic. 34-42, Pastime 
663*, Nevill envoy 14, Ecl. prol. 100 

Fabricius, Walton C 22*, Cavend. epitaph 22. 

facers, Garl. 189*. 

facoun, falcon, Churl 358. 

faculte, ability, Garl. 800; —art, branch of learn- 
ing, Ship 7001. 

falle, to befall, MaReg. 74, FaPrin. G 24, Shir- 
ley 1:50.—fall not, fit not, Ecl. 602. 

ffaire fall, success befall, Shirley 1:50, Garl. 27. 

falls, false, FaPrin. A 320. 

fallyng, failure, Orl. xxi:13. 

Fame. See note FaPrin. B 95; see Epithal. 133, 
Hawes 135 ff., Cavend. 1223 ff. 

fane, banner, Hawes 4264;—vane, Hawes 4382. 

ffantasien, to imagine, FaPrin. A 17, 23. 

fantasy, opinion, FaPrin. E 59, G 22, Garl. 39; 
—imagination, Hawes 675, 677. 

ffantzy, fancy, Cavend. 1244, 1245, 1318, 1423. 


ffardel, burden, FaPrin. D 106, Mass 156, 177. 

fare, far, Prohib. 33, Cavend. 1973" 

farsid, filled, well provided, MaReg. 13. 

faste by, close by, Epithal. 20. 

fatal, fateful, FaPrin. B 114, Garl. 316;—fore- 
ordained, Dance 407, Epithal. 10, Garl. 34; — 
prophetic, Hawes dedic. Sih Hawes 665%, 
751, Garl. 34. 

fatenesse, fatness, Churl 11. 

fatigate, wearied, Prohib. 46, Ecl. 921. 

fauel, MaReg. 211*, 223, 244, 247, 284, 287. 

fauour, appearance, Ecl. 426. 

fautes, fawtes, faults, Ship 84, 108, 137, 139, 
13834, Garl. 112*, 203. 

fautles, faultless, Ship 89. 

fawty, faulty, Ship 6996. 

fayn, fain, Hawes 111;—to feign, Hawes 155, 
716, 1301, 1357, 1389, 4308, Ship 52. 

faynt, exhausted, Lickp. a —weak, Cavend. 34. 

feard, afraid, Ecl. 894. 

feare. to terrify, Hawes 4260. 

fearefull, dreadful, Ecl. 881. 

febled, enfeebled, Ecl. 923. 

feblesse, weakness, Shirley 1:12, 11:13. 

fee, Hawes 196*. 

feere, fear, Walton D 16, 42. 

in feere, together, Walton E 145, Bycorne 11, 
Dance 95, 657, Epithal. 5, Orl. xiv:4, Hardyng 
45. See fere. 

fel, to feel, Mass 16. 

fele, many, Pallad. 89, 106, Libel 416;—to ex- 
amine, comprehend, Pallad. 73*, 91, Libel 188, 
Garl. 744; see FaPrin. A 126; —to notice, Ecl. 
114, 118, 122, 678*. 

fell, cruel, Walton A 237, D 10, E 166, Ecl. 932, 
1007 


felles, skins, Libel 245, 524. 

felly, cruelly, FaPrin. B 114. 

felt, felt hat, Ecl. 384; —v., see fele, Libel 188. 

femel, female, MaReg. 138. 

ffemynyte, femininity, Horns 35. 

fendis, of fiends, Dance 359. 

fenestrall, windows, Garl. 1354. 

fer, ferre, far, Walton A 12, 308, E 48, 59, Epi- 
thal. 46, FaPrin. A 245, B95, 108 115, D 56, 
68, Orl. xviii:26, Nevill 54; —s. fear, Mass aa: 

ferd, see fforferd. 

Ferdinand, Ship 7015*. 

fere, mate, Dial. 739;—-s. fire, Churl 178; —far, 
Shirley 11:16; —fear, Libel 555. See feere. 

ferforth, far, Walton E 52. 

ferme place, a farm, Ship 8503. 

fern ago, long ago, MaReg. 196. 

ferneyeer, last year, MaReg. 423. 

fers, fierce, Walton A 237, FaPrin. A 212. 

fersere, fiercer, Walton B 28*. 

ferthe, fourth, Hardyng 38. 

ferye, holiday, Dance 211*. 

fesaunt, pheasant, Garl. 103. 

festes, entertainments, Libel 481. 

fette, fetch, Dance 414. 

feynt, insufficient, Thebes 104. 

feyntice, weakness, FaPrin. D 96, Mass 169. 

ff-. For words so beginning see under f-. 


566 SELECT GLOSSARY 


ffeueryeer, February, Pallad. A 7, B 5. 

fil, befell, Churl 42, FaPrin. A 102, 104. 

fill, fell, FaPrin. A 53, 271, B 152, Garl. 30. 

filowePe, followeth, Shirley 1:45. 

fine, end, Dance 32, 39, 640, Prohib. 26*;— 
to end, Dance 430. See fyne. 

fitte, song, section of a poem, Ecl. 55, 720. 

flagraunt, fragrant, Garl. 665, 962. 

flambe, flame, Walton A 234, E 45, Hawes 102, 
120 


flatereris, flatterers, FaPrin. C 86. 

fleand, fleeing, Hardyng 70; see 6*. 

fleen, to fly, Churl 137. 

t ees, fleece, Walton B 10, Libel 245. 

fleinge, inconstant, variable, Ship 542. 

flent, flint, Ecl. 824. 

ffleth, vo. flies, FaPrin. B 95, 120. 

fletinge, flowing, Thebes 17. 

fleyen, to fly, Walton C 32. 

fligh, flew, Churl. 171. 

Flora, Thebes 13, Garl. 679. 

florifie, to adorn with flowers, Pallad. 80, 81. 

florthe, floor, Garl. 480. 

flouring, vigorous? ornate? FaPrin. G 163. 

Flower and Leaf strife, see p. 199. See Orl. xvii. 

fovoun, oan Churl 130, 241, FaPrin. C 106, 
Ka 25i9, 

foisty et Gar]. 633*. 

folde, bend, Walton A 298. 

foly, foolish, Dance 128. 

folynesse, folly, Walton A 368. 

fond, silly, Ecl. 401, Garl. 735. 

fond, found, Walton B 32, Bycorne 98, 99, Dance 
20, Epithal. 10, FaPrin. A 76, D 62, G 96, 
Pallad. 30, 65. 

foo, Phoo! Garl. 633. 

foone, foes, Churl 238, Epithal. 164. 

for, as, Hardyng 4;—because (of), Walton A 
129, 299, D 43, E 12, 168, etc., MaReg. 335, 
FaPrin. A 451, G 269, Ecl. 797, 929, Garl. 214; 
—in order that, Hardyng 39;—for? Orl. vii:6; 
—against, Ecl. 5. 

for any thyng, Libel 253*. 

for thy, see forthy. 

forbere, do without, Bycorne 35*, Libel 268. 

force, s. matter, consequence, MaReg. 305, Ecl. 
236, 614;—». to care, attach importance to, 
Ecl. 645, 647, Garl. 725. See forse. 

fordope, destroys, Dance 117, 308. 

fordullid, much dulled, Churl 340, Cavend. 
1219. 

fforferd, much terrified, Pallad. A 5. 

fore, Orl. v:11*. 

fore by, by, Libel 25, 135, 143. 

forgate, forgot, Garl. 369. 

forlete, forletten, to abandon, Walton A 106, 
319, 326. 

forlore, lost, Shirley I:8, Nevill 152. 

forlost, lost, Orl. xviii:8, 16, 24, 28. 

formals, Ripley 116*. 

forme, front, first, Pallad. B 4, Garl. 595. 

formely, formally, Walton E 100. 

Former Age, Walton B. 

former date, Garl. 826*. 


formest, foremost, Garl. 287, 679. 

fforpyned, tortured, Walton D 48. 

fforride, riding ahead, Pallad. D 3. 

forsayd, aforesaid, Garl. 561, 

forse, s. care, Ecl. 24. See force. 

forshyuere, to break in pieces, Orl. xiv:7. 

forslepid, slept heavily, Orl. xix:7. 

forster, forester, Garl. 1374; see 27. 

for that, because, Thebes 140, Ecl. 531. 

forther, earlier?, elder, Nevill envoy 10. See 
former date. 

not forthi, nevertheless, Walton E 19, 47. 

forthinki) me, gives me regret, Dance 275. 

forthir, forthre, to further, support, FaPrin. 
D 62, K 4, Reproof 32, 49. 

forthwt, forthwith. 

forthy, therefore, MaReg. 356. See not forthi, 
yit forthy. See Cavend. 39* 

fortop, forehead, Garl. 1306. 

fortune, to happen, Ship 176, ae 85,1112; — 
to manage, favor, Epithal. 176. 

Fortune exculpated, Ecl. 1O7s® 

Fortune’s wheel, Cavend. 190-92*. 

foro ive, to support, to equip?, Nevill 186, Ecl 

971 


for well, farewell, Lickp. 111. 

forwhy, wherefore, Orl. xvi:19;—because, Orl. 
xili:l 

foryete, to forget, Dance 171. 

foryetilnesse, forgetfulness, FaPrin. D 31. 

foryeue, forgive, MaReg. 408 

fforyoven, forgiven, Epithal. 105. 

foster, forester, Garl. 27; see 1374. 

founden, tested? tried? Walton A 368. Old 
Eng. fandian ? 

afourme, Dance 274. Read a forne. 

fowerth, fourth, Ripley 193. 

fowles, fools, Ship 539. 

foysoun, see foison, Ship 3. 

fraiys, frays, quarrels, Garl. 182. 

Franceis, i.e., Petrarch, FaPrin. K 38. 

franchemole, Thebes 101*. 

fraunchise, s. and v., license, Dance 366, 469, 
604. 

frauncis, i.e., Petrarch, Burgh 13. 

frawhydnes, frowardness, Orl. vii:4. 

fre, Libel 557*. Read frele? 

frequent, to use, practise, Cavend. 1324. 

frere, friar, Garl. 375. 

freshe, gay, gorgeous, Garl. 39. 

fret,torn, Dance 341, Garl. 1417;—ornamented, 
Garl. 485. 

frete, to devour, Dance 398, Emenee 24s 

frigius, Phrygian, FaPrin. K 17. 

friste, first, FaPrin. G 58, 266, Hardyng 8, 14. 

fro, from. 

frowise, Ecl. 423. Same as froyse? Not in 
NED 


frownsyd, wrinkled, Garl. 1306. 
froyse, Thebes 101*. 

fryththy, having low woods, Garl. 22. 
fulfill, to eke out, Ecl. 390. 

fulfilled, filled, Ecl. 664, Ship 609. 
fulle, atte fulle, as a whole. Libel 78. 


AND FINDING LIST 567 


fume, odor, smoke, Hawes dedic. 40, Hawes 13, 
341. 

fumouse, heady, vaporous, Libel 112. 

funerall, ominous, “‘funeste”, FaPrin. E 31. 

fur, Dance 250*, Ship 498*. 

furder, further, Hawes 344. 

Furies not invoked, Walton 60-61*. 

furour, madness, rage, Ship 7005, Ecl. 1006. 

fury, fiery, Walton A 233. 

ffustian, a coarse weave of cotton or flax, Libel 
76. See Garl. 1184 for metaphor. 

fuyre, fire, Walton B 28, E 45, 50, 134. 

fuyres, furies, Walton D 41. 

fy, Fie! Orl. xiv:3. 

fyers, fierce, Ship 6960. 

fylle, v. fell, FaPrin. B 152, Garl. 872. 

fyn, a. close, FaPrin. G 164. See under fyne. 

fyne, to end, Walton A 161, Dance 263, 430, 
Epithal. 44, FaPrin. C 62, G 124;—s. end, 
Dance 32, 39, 640, Epithal. 175, FaPrin. 
A 228, E 97, G 164, Mass 179. 

fyne force, Hawes 275*. 

fyned, wrought to delicacy, Cavend. 1303*. 

fyt, Ecl. prol. 16. See fitte. 

fyx, to make permanent, Prohib. 51. 


gabille, cable, Garl. 817. 

gadder, to gather, Garl. 107. 

gadrid, gathered, FaPrin. G 10. 

gadryn, to gather, Mass 158. 

gaff, gave, FaPrin. D 14, E 89, K 6. 

gagwyne, Gaguin, Garl. 375*. 

galauntes, galaundes, gallants, Ship 540, 596. 

galeys, galleys, Libel 336, Ship 53. 

galiene, Galen, Garl. 1392*. 

gall, see honey and gall, MaReg. 79*; see rub 
on the gall, Garl. 97*. 

Galtres, Garl. 22*. 

galwes, gallows, FaPrin. G 303. 

gambawdis, s. gambols, Garl. 602. 

gan, began, Walton A 140, 348, D 44, E 68, 
Churl 65, FaPrin. A 7, C 3, D 89, Orl. xix:3, 
Lickp. 52, Hawes 65, 197, 4215, 4355. See 
Hawes 67, 282. 

gan, did (auxil.), Walton A 301, 387, D 17, 
Chur! 10, 297, FaPrin. D 39, 46, 52, 72, 128, 
E 5, 24, 73, G 3, 15, 31, 51, 65, 96, 98, H 1, K 36, 
Lickp. 44, 46, 47, 65, 70, 73, 84, 87, 109, Orl. 
xix:14, Hardyng 109, Hawes 301, 326. 

garded, trimmed or faced, Ship 509, 549, 8483. 

Garden, Churl 47 ff.*, Garl. 646 ff., Cavend. 115- 
18*. 

gargeled, gargeyld, equipped with gargoyles, 
Hawes 307, Nevill 115, 178. 

garnade, garnado, Granada, Churl 259, Ship 
6973. See Garl. 485. 

Garter, Order of, Hardyng 123*. 

gase, s. that which is stared at, Garl. 1184. See 
NED. 


gasid, gazed, stared, Garl. 265. 

Gaspian, Caspian, Garl. 553, (Marshe ed. reads 
Caspian). 

gaspyng, Hawes 87*. 

gastful, dreadful, Dance 564. 

gat, got, FaPrin. E 68, G 292. 

gayne, Bycorne 46. Read gyn, device? 


Gayus Marrius, Caius Marius, FaPrin. G 243. 

geare, equipment, Ecl. 18. 

Gebar, Ripley 112*; see Prohib. 64*. 

geder, to gather, Orl. xiv:4. 

geef, s. Orl. xxi:5*, see xxii:5. 

geet, raised, tossed up, Walton A 317. 

gefe, to give, Orl. xxii:5. 

gein, against, FaPrin. G 159. 

Gemine, Gemynys, the constellation Gemini, 
Hawes 1403, Cavend. 3. 

Genius, Mass 56*. 

gent, noble, Hawes 428. 

gentrye, noble blood, FaPrin. E 94. 

gentyl, gentle, Shirley 1:57. 

gentyles, gentlefolk, Shirley 1:84. 

genysses, Genesis, Ripley 41. 

gerdouns, guerdons, rewards, Mass 185. 

gere, stuff, Lickp. 98. 

gery, fickle, Orl. xx:10. 

ges, to guess, Orl. 1ii:7, xix:26. 

Gesta Romanorum, Dial. 820. 

gest, guest, Nevill 55. 

geste, s. and v., jest, Hawes 1336, Nevill 21. 

gestes, deeds, Dial. 820*. 

get, fashion, Garl. 1171. 

geue, to give, Lickp. 31, Hawes 251, etc., Ecl. 
320, etc. 

gevers, Geber’s, Prohib. 64*. 

geyn, against, FaPrin. C 98;—s. remedy, help, 
Bycorne 46, Dance 83,157, 603;—to avail, 
Dance 143. 

giggisshe, flighty, wanton, Garl. 1184. First 
case NED. 

giltees, guilty acts, Dial. 717. 

girdle, meaning of, Dance 262*. 

ee snarled so as to show the teeth, Garl. 


gise, guise, mode, Dance 218, 265, Garl. 121. 

glacing, slippery, FaPrin. D 24. 

glade, to gladden, Pallad. 8;—to rejoice, Churl 
258, Pallad. 111. 

glaue, sword, Hawes 4323. 

glee, music, Garl. 278. 

gleede, hot coal, MaReg. 159. 

glint, slippery, Garl. 572. 

globous, globe-shaped, Ripley 37. 

gloire, glory, FaPrin. C 13. 

gloriowsly, brilliantly, Garl. 83. 

glose, to flatter, talk smoothly, MaReg. 266, 
Garl. 744, 894. 

Gloucester, Humphrey, duke of: etymology of 
his name, Dial. 596-7; made duke, Hardyng 
50; lieutenant of England, Dial. 533; against 
Orleans’ liberation, Pallad. 60; marriage to 
Jacqueline, introd. to Epithalamium; his books, 
pp. 143,145, andnoteonPallad. 89; asbibliophile 
and patron, introd. and prol. to FaPrinces, 
introds. to Epithal. and to Letter, introd. to 
Pallad.; military commander, Dial. 576, 610, 
Libel 249; pious son of the Church, prol. to 
FaPrin., introd. to Palladius; name of his 
daughter, FaPrin. A 246*. 

glowmes, is gloomy, Ecl. 474, 1064. 

glum, a black look, Garl. 1095. 

glumme, to look sourly, scowl, Hawes 4355. 


568 SELECT ‘GLOSSARY 


glutton, Garl. 779*. Not in NED. 

Go, little book; see Churl 379 note; see Nevill en- 
voy 1, Garl. 1484. 

god, good, FaPrin. D 39. 

God avow, Ecl. 438*. 

Gold, proverb on, Churl 306*. 

Golden Age, Walton B, Ship 8444* ff. 

goldissh, golden, Churl 306*. 

gone, go, Hawes 320. 

gonge, the privy-closet, Ecl. 120. 

gonne, begun, FaPrin. H 13. 

good, property, Churl 367. 

goode yere, Garl. 730*, 986. 

goordis, gourds, Mass 159, 176. 

gorge, Gorgias, Burgh 10*. 

Gorgones, Gorgons, FaPrin. C 95. 

gose, goes, Garl. 26. 

gossomer, gossamer, Horns 5, LettGlouc. 26. 

gotefelle, goatskin, Libel 56. 

goten, gotten, obtained, Nevill 111, 133, Ecl. 
839, Morley 68. 

gouernaunce, mode of life, Libel 123; —enter- 
prise, Libel 219. 

gouernour, guide, pilot, Thebes 79, Ship 7008. 

gow, Go we! Lickp. 114*. 

Gower, FaPrin. K 24*, Hawes 1261*, Garl. 387 
ff., 1079. See p. 21. 

goynge, gait, Ship 476. 

Gracce, Gracchus, FaPrin. G 140*. 

Gradatio, MaReg. 300-04*. 

grame, woe, Walton C 37. 

grange, farm Ship 8502. 

grapsyng wey, feeling my way, Orl. xviii:26. 

grathly, well, Ecl. 344. 

gratulat, rejoicing, Ripley 4. 

graued, engraved, Ship 133. 

graunt, yield, Nevill 68. 

gray, the badger, Garl. 101. 

grayn, dye, especially scarlet dye, Libel 54;— 
grain, Libel 118. 

gre, a stair, degree, Walton A 335, Dance 283. 
Lat. gradum. 

greable, agreeable, Dial. 690. 

greave, grief, Cavend. 1426. 

grece, staircase, Hawes 319. 

gree, to agree, Garl. 275. 

in gree, kindly, Dance 599, Nevill envoy 15, 
Garl. 1452. Lat. gratum. 

green, Dance 434*. 

grekysshe, Greek, Walton A 330, FaPrin. G 61. 

grene, immature, Mass 19, 171. 

grephyn, griffin, Nevill 183*. 

gressoppes, grasshoppers, Garl. 1136. 

grete, to cry out, Lickp. 86. 

greuance, sorrow, FaPrin. G 245, 255. 

greuen, to suffer, Thebes 115. 

greyhounds, Hawes 106*. 

greyn, grain, Thebes 56. 

Griselda, Bycorne passim, FaPrin. A 348, Cav- 
end. 1369*. 

in groce, ‘“‘en masse”; or “in full’’?, Ship 

974. 


grocery, goods by wholesale, Libel 501. 
grope, to probe, search, Garl. 611, 816. 


grosely, heavily, Garl. 639. 

grossolitis, error for chrysolitis, Garl. 466. 

ground, theme, Garl. 28;—country, Libel 85; 
—floor, Garl. 41? 466;—earth, Orl. xii:23; 
Ecl. 986;—occasion, Epithal. 39. 

grucche, to grudge, be unwilling, Dance 363, 
598, FaPrin. B 52. 

gryp, vulture, Walton D 49. 

grys, gray fur, Dance 325. 

guie, to guide, FaPrin. D 64. 

guippe, error for keep? Orl. iv A:6. 

guy, gye, to guide, MaReg. 387, FaPrin. G 132. 

en, given, Walton A 88. 

gynne, to begin, Thebes 129, 168, FaPrin. 
A 136, ‘© 2, PalladAv2s 

gynyng, a beginning, FaPrin. C 2. 


h, excrescent in spelling, see Walton E 93*. 

ha, han, to have, Churl 99, Thebes 95, 103, 
Dance 170, FaPrin. A 130, 218, 274, B70, E62, 
K 83, Pallad. 21, Mass 85, Orl. xix:22, etc. 

habille, able, Garl. 742. 

habound, to abound, Orl. xii:1. 

hagys, haggis, Thebes 100*. 

hailid, pulled, Garl. 616. 

Hair, see Ship 456*, 541*. 

hale, to pull, Hawes 4349. 

half, hallfe, side, Shirley 11:19, Garl. 10. 

halteth, limps, FaPrin. K 2, Libel 38, Ship 
152, Ecl. 509, Garl. 502, 

Hanibal, Hannibal, Epithal. 152. 

hampton, Southampton, Hardyng 72, 77. 

at the hand, near, Dance 158. 

harde, heard, Ship 7017, Cavend. 1181, Mor- 
ley 66, 169. 

hardly, sorely, Garl. 814. 

harneys, armor, Hawes 172, 175, Ecl. 1124, 
Garl. 1507. 

hastardis, base fellows, Garl. 601. 

haste, hasty, Churl 197. 

hastly, in haste, Libel 493. 

hastow, hast thou. 

hastyue, hasty, Garl. 1111. 

hath, imper. plu., have, Shirley I1:76. 

hattered, hatred, FaPrin. G 288. 

haue in, haue out, i.e., Get in, Get out! Garl. 
25 

hauing, behaving, Ecl. 611; see 734; —posses- 
sion, Walton B 27. 

hault, high, Nevill 13, Cavend. 204. 

haunt, to frequent, practise, Ecl. 356, 1117. 

Bravieke behavior, manner, Orl. xvii:12, Ecl. 
34. 

Hawarde, see Howard. 

hawe, fruit of the hawthorn, i.e., something 
valueless, MaReg. 380. 

hawsed, hoisted, Ship 57. 

Headless lines, see p. 21. 

hearde, herdsman, Ecl. prol. 83, Ecl. 139, 408. 

heares, hairs, Cavend. 1120. 

heauely, heavily, sadly, Morley 216. 

heaven to hear, etc. See note Epithal. 99. 
See paradyce. 

Hecate, Garl. 1288. 


AND FINDING LIST 569 


Hector, Epithal. 138, FaPrin. E 94, Ecl. 1199, 
Cavend. epitaph 6. 

heddelles, Garl. 775*. 

heded, beheaded, Hardyng 77, Ecl. 1086. 

hedelynge, headlong, Dial. 647, Ship 13839. 

hedir, hither, Libel 108, 545. 

on heed, ahead, Dial. 630. 

heeght, i.e., hight, is called, Epithal. 47. 

heelde, kept, held, FaPrin. G 210, K 3. 

heep, a number of people or things, MaReg. 
340, Lickp. 91. 

heere, to hear, FaPrin. G 320. 

hegged, hedged, Churl 49. 

heghe, high, Epithal. 128. 

hele, welfare, advantage, Walton A 134;—». to 
cover, conceal, Lickp. ee 

Helen, of f Troy, see Eleyn 

Helicon (sce elicon), Wal en D 28*, Burgh 5*, 
See Garl. 74. 

helis, error for hertles, Orl. iv B:6. 

heim, hem, them, Dance 414, Libel 326, etc. 

helthe, healing? Garl. 978. 

Helycon, Helicon, Nevill 166. See Elicon. 

henavde, Hainault, Libel 529. See introd. to 
Epithal. 

heng, hung, Walton A 382, Lickp. 99. 

hennes, hens, hence, Walton E 162, Dance 
656, Lickp. 114. 

Henry V, see Epithal. 49, Hardyng; see p. 90. 

Henry VII, see dedic. to Hawes. 

Henry VIII, Ecl. 849, Garl. 1200, Cavend. 1227 
ff., Morley dedic. letter. 

hent, taken, Libel 203, etc., Cavend. 1262, 
1282. 

her, their, Dial. 671, etc., Thebes 30, Dance 12, 
Pallad. 31, Libel 131, Ripley 89, etc. See hir, 
here. 

her aftir, hereafter, Dance 120. 

herber, arbor, Nevill 427, Garl. 646*. 

Hercules, Hawes ie Ecl. 915, Garl. 1257 ff., 
Cavend. epitaph 2, Morley 194; ;—choice of, 
Hawes 27*, Nevill 214*;—knot of, Ecl. 346*. 

herdys, herdboys, Mass 126. 

here, to hear, FaPrin. A368, Shirley 1:2, Pallad. 
34, 60, Mass 86, Libel 508, Garl. 197, 451, 981, 
1066, 1190, Cavend, 1312;—s. hair, Burgh 42, 
Prohib. 36, Ship 483, 485, 8480, Garl. 289;— 
their, Libel 394; —her, FaPrin. A 237, 242; 
—s. heir, Cavend. 140°. 

herefore, heretofore, Libel 167. 

heremyte, hermit, Walton A 227. 

Ad Herennium, see MaReg. 300-04*, see notes 
FaPrin. G 197, etc. 

heris, heres, hairs, Walton A 268, Burgh 42. 

Hermon, Hermione, Morley 221. 

heroicus, Walton A 219*. 

hertis, harts, Garl. 1375. 

hest, command, Walton A 4, 132, Pallad. 128; 
—promise, Mass 105. 

hete, to offer, Lickp. 84. 

hewe, Bycorne 32*. 

hewle, to howl, Ecl. 365. 

hewre, a cap, Lickp. 79: 

heyre, error for yere, Orl. xvii:16. 


hie, high, Pallad. 83. See hih. 

hiere, her, Walton A 305. 

hight, to ‘be named, Thebes 95, Hardyng 34, 
Morley 176. 

higth, high, Garl. 50, 1102, 1106. 

hih, to hie, FaPrin. G272; high, Walton A 317, 
FaPrin. E 61, F 28, Gas: 305. 

rer as nominative, Walton A 92*, FaPrin. 

PaEpecent aus, centaur, horse-man, Garl. 
1262 

hir, hire, their, Walton A 350, Churl 22. 

historiar, historian, Garl. 351. 

hie, it. 

ho, who, Dance 67, 119. 

hokir, scorn, Dial. 741. 

Holcot, MaReg. 249*. 

hold, held, Churl 203, FaPrin. A 47, E 90, 
G i71, 258, Orl. xvii:6. 

holde an hond, hold in hand, manage, Dance 


190. 

hole, holl, whole, Reproof 1, Shirley 1:27, 
Hardyng 48, 61, Prohib. 28, Ship 579, 6941, 
6984, 6993, 8471, Ecl. prol. 127, Garl. 66, 240, 
433, 548, 553, 742, 858, 1140. 

hole, ’ wholly, Shirley Il: 6, Ship 8478. 

holie, holly, wholly, Churl 287, FaPrin. E 1, 
G 92, Nevill 130. 

homerus, Homer, Garl. 329. See Omer. 

an honde, on hand, in control, Dance 190. 

honey and gall, see MaReg. 79*, 

hoo, Halt! Shirley 1:33. 

hool, whole, Dance 124, 145, Epithal. 197, Fa- 
Prin. C 68, Mass 1, Orl. xvi:3. See hole. 

hoolde, s. hold, FaPrin. G 248. 

Horace, see Orace. 

hore, hoar, Walton A 268. 

Horestes, Orestes, Morley 221. 

horns, women’s, see Horns Away, p. 110;—of 
Moses, Garl. 1348*. 

hoso, whoso, Dance 67. 

hospytlerys, hospitallers, members or residents 
of religious orders which cared for the sick, 
Mass 148. 

host, go to, Libel 452*, etc. 

hostlers, innkeepers, Ship 36. 

hoten, hidden, Walton A 267. hot, Ship 593. 

houe, to hover, Walton E 133, Hawes 312. See 
howyng. 

Howard, Lord, Ecl. 621, 797, 853; —the Earl of 
Surrey, Cavend. 1105 ff;—see Garl. 848*, 862*. 

howssys, houses, Cavend. 111. 

howyng, hovering, Churl 224. 

hoyse, to hoist, Hawes 1257. 

huddes, hoods, Ecl. 6. 

huge, great, Orl. xvi:12. 

humors, see note FaPrin. E95. See Libel 350. 

Humphrey, etymology of, Dial. 596-7. See 
Gloucester. 

hundrethe, hundred, Garl. 490, etc. 

hur, her, Shirley 11:52, 53. 

husbondes, husbandmen, Libel 523. 

huscht, hushed, Walton B 19. 

huys, hues, Pallad. 62. 


570 SELECT GLOSSARY 


hy, to hie, Lickp. 15. 

hyde, hidden, secret, Prohib. 96. 

hye stile, see ’style. 

hyegh, hyhe, high, Walton A 11, 88, etc., By- 
corne 114, Epithal. 153, 180. 

hyenes, highness, Hawes dedic. 22. 

hyghte, height, Morley 33;—>p. to assure, Garl. 
637. See hight. 

Hymen, see Ymeneus, Epithal. 176. 

hynde, hind, female of the hart, Garl. 26. 

hynderen, to hinder, FaPrin. G 202. 

hynes, haughtiness, Dance 109. 

hynge, Ene Pallad. C 5. 

hys, v. hies? Orl. vi:11. 

Hysyphyle, Hypsipyle, Morley 207. See Isy- 


phill. 
hyvye, Churl 276. 


jacinctes, jacinths, Garl. 480. 

Jacqueline of Hainault, pp. 144-45. 

to iaggid, cut to pieces, Garl. 623. 

iagounce, jacinth, Churl 232, 318*. 

iangelers, chatterers, Ecl. 666, Garl. 566. See 
Garl. 1235. 

jantel, jantylle, wellborn or wellbred, Garl. 
844, 864, 989, etc.; see 890. 

jantilwomen, gentlewomen, Garl. 793. 

Januays, the Genoese, Libel 322, 504. 

Janus, Garl. 1430. 

Ianyueer, January, Pallad. B 4 

iape, s.and »., trick, jest, Churl 192, Thebes 185, 
Orl. xiii:15, Garl. 361. 

Jaques, Jacqueline, Epithal. 69. 

Iason, Morley 203. 

Ibroght, brought, Walton A 296. 

icaried, carried, Libel 530. 

iche, each, Garl. 268. 

iclipped, called by name, Hawes 135, 315, 4319. 
See yclipped. 

Icononucar, Garl. 328*. 

Idleness or Sloth. See Hawes dedic. 44, Hawes 
711, Garl. 120, Cavend. 24-30*. 

idrede, dreaded, Walton E 167. 

Jean, Genoa, Libel 328. 

ieet, jet, Roundel 3. 

ieloffer, gillyflower, Garl. 967, 1359, 1413. 

ielyous, jealous, Morley 240. 

lerome, St. Jerome, Walton A 19, 44*, Ship 
13870, Garl. 162°. 

iet, to swagger, Ecl. 693. 

I fayth, i’faith, in faith, Garl. 509. 

ifeere, together, FaPrin. G 79. 

ifounde, found, Libel 9. 

ifynde, to find, Libel 562. 

ihesu, Jesus, Libel 374. 

jhewe, hewed, FaPrin. A 96. 

lierarchycall, hierarchical, Ripley 4. 

Jleid, laid, FaPrin. A 168. 

ill, bad, Ecl. 121, 582;—-s. harm, Thebes 108. 
See yl. 

ilyke, equal, Walton A 129. 

immercyable, merciless, Nevill 6. 

immoysturid, saturated, Garl. 692. 


impressid, imagined, ee 175: 

immuyn, immune, Pal lad. D 6. 

jmowled, mouldy, FaPrin. A 220. 

impe, Cavend. 1406*. 

importable, unbearable, FaPrin. D 48. 

importyng, including, bringingin, Cavend. 121. 

impossible, s. Bycorne 110* 

impute, to blame, Ecl. 994. 

inblindeth, v. blinds, Ecl. 425, 

incipience, insapience, unwisdom, Bedford 17. 

incipient, Hardyng 9*. 

inconuenyence, Ship 142*, 226, 534, 600, Ecl. 
87, Cavend. 1371. 

Inde, India, Ship 541. See ynde. 

indigne, unworthy, Pallad. 87. 

indite, see endite. 

ieee to bring in, lead, Ship 13873, Ecl. prol. 


induring, during, Ecl. 456. 

ive blew, deep blue, Nevill 190, 200, Garl. 

infame, infamous, Ecl. 605. 

inferrid, adduced, rote forward, Garl.141*. 

influence, favor, Ecl. 4 

inlesse, to diminish, Rel, "aa 

inowthe, enough, Garl. 241. 

inperfyte, imperfect, Prohib. 35. 

inportable, unbearable, Mass 175, 177. See 
importable. 

inspeccioun, vigilasce, Hardyng 13;—insight 
FaPrin. G 4 

instance, suggestion, Roundel 2. 

insue, see ensue. 

insure, to assure, Ship 13820. 

insygne, to educate, Ship 114. (Fr. enseigner) 

intencyon, attention, Nevill 199, 

intende, to pay heed to, Ship 115, Ecl. 185, 531, 
595, 683, 922. 

intendement, intention, Hardyng 11. 

ie attentive, Garl. 926, 946, Cavend. 

intier, entire, complete, Cavend. epit. 23. 

intreatable, intractable, pitiless, Ecl. 872. 

intresse, entrance, Hawes 318;—concern, share 
FaPrin. A 268. 

inuentyff, error for invectyff, FaPrin. G 285. 

inuentyfe, inventive, Hawes 674, 718. 

inuident, envious person? Pallad. 16. 

inwarde siht, creative mind, FaPrin. A 17. 
See note Dial. 640. 

joenesse, jeunesse, tis ata 1:78. 

iolesye, jealousy, Libel 1 

iolite, gayety, Walton A et. 

Tollas, Garl. 1462*. 

Ioly, Ecl. 724*. 

Joone, John, Walton A 211. 

Iopas, Garl. 682*. 

iornee, iourne, journey, Dance 273, FaPrin. 
D 50, 98, 114, etc 

iowes, jaws, Roundel 3. 

ioy, to make joyful, Orl. xxi:3. 

joyelles, jewels, Cavend. 1387. 

ipight, penetrated, set, Walton E 129, 

ipocras, Hippocrates, Garl. 1393. 


AND FINDING LIST 57 


Ipre, Ypres, Libel 74. 

iren, iron, Libel 56, Prohib. 38. 

ironne, run, Dance 421. 

irous, wrathful, violent, FaPrin. G 80. 

perehill, Hypsipyle, Garl. 1005*. See Hysy- 
hh 


phyle. ; 
itake, taken, Libel 198. 
Itau3t, taught, Dance 563. 
Tubilesses, celebrations? Ripley 4. 
Jubiter, Jupiter, FaPrin. E 87, 89, etc. 
Judicum, the book of Judges, Churl 9. 
juel, jewel, Orl. v:8. 
iugurta, Jugurtha, Garl. 332. 
iurediccion, jurisdiction, FaPrin. A 161. 
juror, see Dance 481*. 
iust, joust, Ecl. 66. 
Tuvenall, Juvenal, Burgh 21, Garl. 95, 340. 
Juvo, Juno, Epithal. 177. 
ive, ivy, Burgh 40*. 
iwis, iwus, iwys, certainly,Walton A 247, Libel 
103, 117, 335, Ripley 46, 64, Garl. 919*. 
iyen, eyes, Ship 151, 503, 13846. 


kannest, canst, Walton A 24. 

karfull, woeful, Orl. xv:8, xxi:2. See carfull. 

Katherine of France, Epithal. 47*. 

kauht. See catch. 

kechyn, kitchen, Churl 145. 

keep, kepe, s. heed, MaReg. 195, Libel 39. 

kempes, eels, Ecl. 424. 

ken, to instruct, guide, Garl. 809, 1395. 

kenned, knew, Lickp. 102. 
kepe, kepte, to care, heed, MaReg. 425, Orl. 

~ -xxi:15, Ship 180. 

kerue, to carve, plow, Walton B 15. 

keste, cast, threw, Nevill 23, Garl. 531. 

keuered, covered, Walton B 30. 

keuerchef, keverche, kerchief, Horns 21, 56. 

keyse, keys, Ripley 84. 

kid, made known, FaPrin. A 237. 

kidfelle, kidskin, Libel 56. 

kinde, nature, Churl 256, 407, FaPrin. G 35, 
Ecl. 321. See kynde. 

kindly, natural, Dance 356. See kyndely. 

kit, cut, Garl. 184. 

knet, knotted, FaPrin. G 306. 

kneuh, knew, FaPrin. G 148. 

knottes, Cavend. 117*. 

knowleching, knowledge, FaPrin. C 5, D 123. 

knowlege, acknowledge, Ship 99, 537. 

kokkis, God’s, Thebes 126*. 

kokolddis, cuckolds, Garl. 186. 

konne, to be master of, know how, Walton E 32, 
Dance 420, Thebes 138. 

konnynge, ability, knowledge, Dance 294, Fa- 
Prin. G 18, Burgh 42, Shirley 11:37, Mass 26, 
Garl. 198, 850, 882, 889, 1208. 

korage, to encourage, Garl. 152. 

koude, could. 

kouthe, known, FaPrin. G 204. 

koyse, Thebes 102*. 

krakkis, boasts, Garl. 189. 

kunnyng, see konnynge. 

kurris of kynde, curs by nature, Garl. 613. 


kus, a kiss, MaReg. 155. 

kut, Dial. 789*. 

kyby, chapped, Garl. 502. 

kylle, to be killed, Garl. 95. 

kynde, kyndely, nature, natural, Walton A 359, 
372, E 14, 24, 44, 151, Horns 1, 23, 31, FaPrin. 
A 109, Shirley 1:57, Orl.ix:2, Ripley 136, Nevill 
83, 148;—a. gracious, Pallad. C 3, Cavend. 7. 

kynrede, kindred, FaPrin. E 1. 

kyt, cut, Walton A 338. See kit. 

kythe, to make evident, show, MaReg. 406. 

kyttithe, cuts, Garl. 817. 


L., fifty, Libel 435. 

Labor, figure of, Ecl. 864 ff. 

lace, a net, Dance 225;—». to bind, Epithal. 13. 

lacheses, Lachesis, Cavend. 1261, 1281. 

lad, led, Dance 494, 546, 580. 

ladyn, loaded, Garl. 727. 

laft, left, Cavend. 1305. 

lake, s. lack, FaPrin. G 18, K 2, 56, Mass 46, 
Garl. 285, Cavend. 38, 151. 

lame, Pallad. 22*. 

lammesse, Lammas-tide, Hardyng 71*. 

lanterne, FaPrin. C 22*, G 8, 154, Nevill 136. 

Laodome, Laodomia, Garl. 956*, Morley 222. 

Lapidary, see note Churl 266. 

large, free, Ship 153. 

at large, at liberty, Churl 137, Dance 262, Ship 
83, 8443, Cavend. 154. See Libel 241; —in 
general, Garl. 1327. 

larges, largesse, abundance, Orl. xv:23. 

lark, see note Garl. 533-36, and see p. 83. 

lasis, laces, Garl. 773. 

lasse, less, Chur! 338. 

lassith, lessens, FaPrin. G 26. 

at the longe last, finally, Garl. 1365, Ecl. 81, 
cp. 584. 

late, v. let, Walton C 3, 5, FaPrin. K 56, Re 
proof 47, 62. 

latyn, Orl. six:11*. 

lauer, a stream? Nevill 144, 161. NED says 
“basin of a fountain’. 

Laurent de Premierfait, FaPrin. introd. 

ee laurel, Churl 25, 57, 116, 172, FaPrin. 

14. 


lauret, laurel, Ecl. prol. 112. 

lauriate, honored by or worthy of the laurel, 
Churl 15*, FaPrin. C 12, K 38, Burgh 21*, 
Nevill dial. 6, Ecl. prol. 104, Ecl. 263, 685, 
862, 919, 1073, 1091, Garl. 63, 116, 324 and 
introd. 

lawly, lowly, Garl. 821; see Walton D 35. 

lawre, laurel, Burgh 40. 

lay, law? Walton A 103. Fr. /ei. 

laycestr, Leicester, Hardyng 45. 

leames, rays, Hawes 1265. 

lease, a lie, Libel 95. See lesyng. 

leasing, losing, Ecl. 56. 

leasour, leisure, Ecl. 160. 

least, lest, Ecl. 252. 

at least way, leastways, anyhow, Nevill dial. 
41 


leche, alike, Praise of Chaucer 2100*. 


572 SELECT GLOSSARY 


leche, s. physician, Dance 424. 

lectrure, learning, FaPrin. A 384. 

lede, lead, Burgh 47. 

ledyn, leaden, Nevill 34. 

leechys, physicians, LettGlouc. 9. 

leef, pleasant, pleased, Orl. xxi:1, Libel 120*. 

leet, caused to be, MaReg. 254. 

leeued, believed, MaReg. 220. 

left, lived? Walton A 220. 

leften, to lift, Walton C 10, FaPrin. C 61. 

legeble, legible, Burgh 27. 

legende, reading, Shirley 1:2. 

legerdemayn, Dance 526. 

leicer, leisure, FaPrin. A 232, 364, C 123. 

lemys, limbs, Mass 157, Nevill 427. 

lene, to lean, bow, Garl. 54;—lent me, leaned 
on, Garl. 17, 281. 

lenger, longer, FaPrin. E 41, Libel 448, etc. 

lengest, longest. 

lenghe, length, Hardyng 68. 

lept, leaped, Hawes 4364, 4382. See Garl. 104, 
Hawes 111. 

lere, to inform, teach, Thebes 36, FaPrin. A 43, 
Orl. xiv:21; —to learn, Churl 299, Dance 92, 
FaPrin. D 38, Burgh 11, 14, Mass 24. 

lerned, taught, Libel 223. 

lesard, lizard, Garl. 104. 

lese, to lose, Walton B 24, Churl 95, 265, 270, 
Dance 400, FaPrin. G 36, Orl. xxii:3, Prohib. 
83, Ship 74. 

leste, to choose, Walton A 186, MaReg. 107, 
Dance 144;—least, Walton A 130, Dance 25, 
320, 646, Garl. 880. 

leeynge, a lie, MaReg. 223, Churl 200, Hard- 

g 5. 


letarce: Prohib. 39*. 

lete, to leave, Dance 110;—to cause to, FaPrin. 
E 45, Shirley 1395 Libel 363, 484; —to delay, 
Dance 567, Lickp. we 

lete, for lette, to hinder, Walton A 259, Hawes 
4274, Ecl. 38. 

lette, to hinder, FaPrin. G 303, Libel 479;—s. 
hindrance, Walton A 389, MaReg. 174, Thebes 
171, FaPrin. D 91, Orl. i:4, 11:5. 

letuary, electuary, a thick sirupy medicine, 
LettGlouc. 43, 63. 

leue, to believe? Libel 365, Shirley II:10;—to 
leave, Walton A 179; —? Dial. 714. 

leve up, to leave, Dance 237. 

leuer, leuyr, rather, Dial. 817, Churl 124, Dance 
385, Orl. xv:7. 

leuyng, living, FaPrin. B 66, C 9, G 321. 

lewde, ignorant, Churl 311. See Roundel 2: 
Churl 326, Prohib. 71, Ship 13853, Garl. 227, 
Cavend. 34; —sensual, Ship 553, 563. 

lewdeness, Ship 119, 227, Garl. 770. 

lewdly, badly, Ecl. 662. 

leysere, leisure, LettGlouc. 2, Orl. xiv: 26, xiii:31, 
Garl. 1060 

li, i.e., librae, pounds, MaReg. 421. 

librair, library, Pallad. 96. 

library, catalogue, Garl. 764. 

Libye, Libya, FaPrin. E 8. 


nag as, like, asif, Dance 3, 389; —as, Epithal. 


Lichlider, his theory of verse, pp. 83-84. 

lidderness, i.e., lithernes, sloth, timid inertia, 
Gar]. 727. 

liddurnes, blackguards, Garl. 188*. 

liff, life, FaPrin. H 24. 

lifly, living, Dance 538. See lyvely. 

lifte, left, Hardyng 125. 

ligging, lyinz, recumbent. 

light, alighted, Hawes 4228, 4317. 

likerous, greedy, sweet-toothed, MaReg. 147. 

likyng, delight, luxury, Libel 366, see note 338; 
Orl. xii:25, Ecl. 352. 

lion, the constellation Leo, Cavend. 6. 

List, the, as a rhetorical “color”, Epithal. 71*, 
See Cavend. epitaph. 

list, v. wish. 

listith on, listens to, Churl 275. 

litel, lyte, little, Walton A 57, MaReg. 92, 
Dial. 506, Dance 322, 490, Burgh we 

lith, imposes as a burden, requires? Dial. 682; 
—lies, FaPrin. B 49, 52. 

on liue, alive, Walton A 184, Hawes 140, 1314. 

Livius, Garl. 344. 

lo! Walton D 66, Orl. xiii:28*. 

lodesman, pilot, Ship 63. 

on loft, aloft, Churl 209. 

logged, lodged, Thebes 67, 78, etc. 

loken, to look, Walton D 72. 

fol Lollards, FaPrin. A 403, Hardyng 9*, 


Leliiua; see note FaPrin. A 284. 

londe, to bring, set? Pallad. 47. 

London Rockes, Ship 75*. 

lone, loan, Libel 431. 

on long, in length, Walton C 3 

long, to belong, FaPrin. G io, ‘Libel 73, 1055 
Hawes 124, 4430, Ship 471, 13877, Ecl. 13, 
256, 282, 305, Garl. 1219. 

loodsterre, lodestar, Epithal. 191. 

looke, look at, Shirley I1:4. 

loos, reputation, MaReg. 345. Lat. laus. 

loose, to lose, Walton D 72. 

lordshipepe, rules, ee over, Epithal. 25, 

lore, lost, MaReg. 349 

loreyne, Lorraine, Hardyng 93, Garl. 494. 

lorn, lost, FaPrin. E 32; ; —deprived? Pallad. 34. 

lose, to dissolve, Ripley TiS MS2 

losellis, Garl. 188*. 

losengeour, false flatterer, MaReg. 220. 

losond, loosened, Garl. 719, 1134 

lopest, most loath or unwilling, Dance 312. 

louh, low, FaPrin. A 128, 223. 

loute, to bend low, submit, Libel 223. 

lowis, Lewis. 

ee to lower, look black, Walton A 258, Hawes 
4354. 

Lucan, Burgh 20, FaPrin. C 17, Garl. 337. 

Lucilius, Garl. 381. 

Lucine, Lucina, the moon, Thebes 7, FaPrin. 
C 90, G 37, K 31, Garl. 6. 

ye Lucretia, Horns 29, Epithal. 75, Nev- 
ill 835. 


AND FINDING LIST BAS 


lumpes, dullards, Garl. 727. 

lune, Luna, the moon, i.e., silver, Prohib. 43*. 

lure, s. Dance 2077; "LettGlouc. 37, FaPrin. 
B 117; see MaReg. 121; :—standard? Garl. 976. 

lurke, to shirk work, be idle, Cavend. 1219 (first 
case NED, 1551); —to hide, Ecl. 60. 

not lustith me, it pleases me not, Orl. xili:15; 
see Orl. xxii:5. 

lustris, FaPrin. E 69*. 

ly, to lie, Shirley I1:42. 

lybbard, leopard, Garl. 590. 

lych, like, FaPrin. B 106. 

Lydgate, essay on, pp. 77-98; partial list of his 
work, 100-101; his metre, 83 ff.; his padding 
phrases, 88 ff. his reading, 92- 94; his use of 
Chaucer, 90- 92; list of better lines by him,81- 
82; his writing about women, 95; his attitude 
to ‘Nature, 95. He gives his name, Thebes 
92, FaPrin. K 56; names his birthplace, Fa- 
Prin. K 45. His relation to Gloucester, in- 
trods. to Epithal. and to Letter, also to FaPrin. 
Alluded to Reproof 26 ff., by Shirley 1:80, 
11:24, by Hawes 1261 note, 1282 ff., 1317 ff., 
1339, 1346, dedic. 27, 48; by Skelton, Garl. 391 
428 ff., 1079. 

in lyke, alike, Walton C 19. 

lyketh me, it pleases me, Walton A 41 (dut see 
B 17), Cavend. 114. 

lymster, Leominster, Ecl. 316. 

lyn, to lie, FaPrin. A 70. 

lynage, lineage, Walton C 15, etc. 

lynkeld, linked, Bycorne 193: 

lyst, lest, Ship 65, 81, 217, 587;—to will, Re- 
proof 11, etc., Orl. ix: 4, 5, Ripley 53, etc. 

lyste, to listen, Ripley 75. 

lyte, little, Mass 21. 

lyttler, lesser, Shirley I1:10. 

lyvely, of life, Cavend. 1262, 1280. See Cav- 
end. 121. See lifly. 


maad, made, FaPrin. H 18. 

maas, mace, FaPrin. D 41*. 

macabre, pronunciation of, p. 124 note; etymo- 
logy of, see note on Dance 24. 

MacCracken. See notes FaPrin. A 303, Garl. 
296; see pp. 79, 198, 218. 

macrobius, Garl. 367. 

mad, made, Mass 148. 

made, made of, held, regarded, Walton E 98, 
Garl. 185. 

madir, madder, Libel 521. 

mafay, My faith! Orl. xvi:23, xviii:10. 

mageran, marjoram, Garl. 890, etc. 

magre, maugre, in spite of, Dance 15. See 
malgre, maugre. 

maintenance, Garl. 193*. 

to maistresse, as a mistress, Dance 165. 

maistrie, maystry, mastery, FaPrin. A 169, 
399, Orl. xiii:4. 

for the maistrie, MaReg. 149*, Dial. 565, Shir- 
ley 1:42. 

maistris, crafts, schemes, Dance 528, see Garl. 

83 


make, mate, Orl. xix:13, 22, Garl. 1378. 


makyng, composition, Walton A 39, Thebes 
rae FaPrin. A 356, D 17, 28, Reproof 21 Shirley 


malapertly, ill-advisedly, Epithal. 50. 

male, portmanteau, Thebes 76. 

malencolie, melancholy, MaReg. 301*. 

malencolik, melancholic, Thebes 5, FaPrin. 
BI 95*: 

malgam, amalgam, Prohib. 50. 

malgre, s. illwill, Ecl. 736*. See mawgree, 
Dial. 795. 

maligne, to speak evil, FaPrin. G 84. 

Malory. See Gen. Introd. pp. 34, 36. 

manace, to menace, FaPrin. B 93, C 46, Dai. 

maner, sort of, FaPrin. Gist 

man is, mannes, man’s, Churl 247. 

mansion, Thebes 11, FaPrin. A 299*. 

Mantuan, Ecl. prol. 33: see introd. to Ecl. 

Manuscripts: a) in lists. —Of Walton, p. 41; of 
Hoccleve, p. 57; of the Churl and Bird, p. 103; 
of Horns yaa p. 111; of Bycorne, p. 114; of 
the Siege of Thebes, p. 119; of the Dance Mac- 
abre, p. 125; of the French Dance Macabre, 
pp. 426-7; of the Fall of Princes, pp. 155-6; 
of the Libel of English Policy, p. 240 footnote; 
of Orléans, p. 217; of the Compend of Alchemy, 
pa 2o2. 

b) singly.—Aberystwyth of Ripley, p. 253; 
Adds. 29729 (Stow) of Burgh and of Shirley 
II, p. 194; Arundel 38 of Hoccleve, p. 74; Arun- 
del 119 of Thebes, p. 120; Bibl. nat., Paris, 
of Orléans, p. 217; Cotton Vitellius E x of 
Skelton, p. 342; Egerton 2402 of Cavendish, 
p. 369; Fairfax 16 of the Reproof and of the 
Lover’s Mass, p. 461; Harley 542 of London 
Lickpenny, p. 237; Harley 682 of the 
Orléans translations, p. 217; Harley 1766 of 
the Fall of Princes, p. 156; Harley 2255 of the 
Letter to Gloucester and of Horns Away p. 79; 
Harley 4011 of the Libel, p. 478; Hunt- 
ington 111 and Huntington 744 of Hoccleve, 
pp. 60, 57; Lansdowne 204 of Hardyng, p. 233; 
the Lille MS of the Dance Macabre, p. 426; 
Lincoln Cathedral and Longleat 258 of the 
Churl and Bird, pp. 103-04; Royal 16 F iiof Or- 
leans, p. 217; Royal 18 A xiii of Walton, p. 41; 
Royal 18 A xv of Morley, p. 391; Royal 18 D 
iv and D v of the Fall of Princes, p. 156; Selden 
supra 53 of the Dance Macabre and of Hoc- 
cleve’s Dialogue, p. 124; Trinity College Cam- 
bridge R 3, 20 (Shirley) of Bycorne, of the 
Epithalamium, and of Shirley I, p. 79; Trinity 
College Cambridge R 3, 21 of the Court of 
Sapience, p. 259; Wentworth Wodehouse of 
Palladius, p £ 

mapely, maple, Garl. 1344. 

Mapheus Vegius, see p. 391. 

marce, March, Hardyng 3. 

March Hare, Garl. 626*. 

marchaundye, merchandise, Libel 396, 456, 
492, 509. 

Marcus, i.e., M. Antoninus Pius, Morley 155. 

marcyalte, martial prowess, Nevill 837. 

marcyan, Martianus Capella, Burgh 20%. 


574 SELECT GLOSSARY 


margarete, gem, Churl 253. 

margent, margin, Garl. 1135. 

maris, Mary’s, Lickp. 5, 44. 

markesyte, Prohib. 41". 

Maro, Virgil, Garl. 1058. 

marrius, Caius Marius, FaPrin. G 260. 

marte, error for arte? Prohib. 89*. 

martes, marts, Libel 518. 

martys, of Mars, Epithal. 155. 

marvelist, marvellous? Burgh 17*. 

mas, substance, Ripley 43, 50. 

masid, bewildered, Garl. 266, 626, 813. 

mastris, works of skill or power, Garl. 383. See 
maistris. 

mateeris, matters, Dial. 497, etc., FaPrin. G 
166, K 22, 24 

matriculate, enrolled, associated, Garl. 1254. 

mattes, mates, Cavend. 1188. 

maugre, mawgree, illwill, Dial. 795; —on 
pain of (losing), Churl 143;—in spite of, Dance 
15, 537, FaPrin. E 74. See malgre. 

maundement, command, Walton A 190. 

Mawdelayne day, St. Mary Magaalen’s day, 
July 22, Ha dyng 57. 

Maximian, Garl. 360*. 

may as infinitive, see Dance 306*. 

may, am able, Ecl. 388. 

May-days, see Orleans xvii. 

mayne, see meyne. 

mayne land, i.e., Alemannia, Germany, Garl. 
497. 

mayntenans, s. support, Garl. 193*, 1111. 

mayster, master, Shirley 1:49*, Ship 13810. 
See MaReg. 177, 201. 

meade, meed, Cavend. 1353, Morley 92. 

mean, medium, Cavend. 5, 14. 

Imean, see note FaPrin. D 8. 

measure, see note FaPrin. B 108. See order. 

meated, meted, measured, Ship 6956 

Mecenas, Maecenas, Ecl. 410, 417. 

med, meed, reward, Lickp. 126. 

meddelyd, mingled, Garl. 295, 1349. See med- 
lid. 

mede, meed, Walton A 238, E 85, 107, Lickp. 
94, Hawes 4251, 4423, Nevill dial. 35. 

medlid, mingled, FaPrin. E 94. See med- 
delyd. 

medoes, meadows, Ecl. 759. 

Medusa, FaPrin. C 94, D 63. 

meenys, means, FaPrin. G 96. 

meest, most, greatest, Pallad. 24. 

meet, measurement, Walton A 314;—a. suit- 
able, Ecl. prol. 87, 105. See mete. 

meeued, moved, MaReg. 333. 

megare, Megaera, one of the Furies, Walton 
A 61. 

meigne, meynee, group of attendants, Wal- 
ton A 381. 

Mel yus, Hawes 163 ff.*. 

mell, take part, encounter, Ecl. 386, 442, 520, 
934, Garl. 1440. 

him melle, concern himself, Walton B 29*. 

Melpomene, Ecl. prol. 117. 


melwell, cod, Lickp. 87. 

memorial, memory, Dance 18;—remembrance, 
FaPrin. A 64;—in memory? Hawes 193, 705, 

memory, memorial? Garl. 955. 

eee tes memory, Thebes 45, FaPrin. A 149, 

4, 

men, to mean, Burgh 45. 

mende, meant, Walton A 334. 

mendycitie, low origin? Cavend. 91. NED 
“beggary”’. 

mene reule, rule of moderation, MaReg. 352. 
See measure. 

menged, mingled Libel 100, 107. 

mengith, mingles, Garl.345. 

menstru, solvent, Ripley passim. 

menstruous, monstrous, Walton E 93. 

mentayne, to maintain, Ship 524, 538. 

ene eye, see note Dial. 640. See inwarde 
siht. 

in thes menynge, by their intention, Shirley 

:102. 

merce, mercy, Orl. xvii:33. 

mercerye, merchandise, Libel 263, 500. 

Mercury, FaPrin. C 78, D 66*, Ecl. 259, 263, 
342, etc., Garl. 810. 

Mercy belongs with Beauty. See Bycorne 88 
and note. 

mercyall, martial, Garl. 347, 1271. 

merely, merrily, Churl oT; 144, Hawes 4447, 
Garl. 1349. 

meritory, deserved, Garl. 429. 

merour, mirror, FaPrin. A 159, G 179*, 216*, 
227. See Dance 49. See myrrour. 

merueiled, marvelled, Walton A 378. 

meschief, ‘misfortune, Walton A 158, etc., Ma- 
Reg. 53, FaPrin. B 71, Hl. See myschief. 

mesour, measure, moderation, FaPrin. B 108*, 
Nevill 216, Ship 491. 

mest, must, Walton A 135. 

met, a. meet, suitable, Cavend. 172. 

mete, to meet, Walton A 257, ?Lickp. 87;—a. 
suitable, Ship 501, 502, Ecl. 1126. 

metely, fairly, Garl. 499. 

metrifyde, made in metre, Garl. 1349, 1431. 

mette, met, FaPrin. G 242, Orl. xviii:3;—a. 
meet, fitting, FaPrin. A 454. 

me mette, I dreamed, Orl. xvii:3. 

was mette, met, Walton A 391. 

meueth, moves, Walton E 155. 

meuyd, disturbed, Dial. 807;—suggested, Re- 
proof 58. 

meuyng, moving, FaPrin. C 82, Orl. ix:2. 

mewe, place of confinement, Cavend. 1276. 

meynee, group of attendants, subjects, Walton 
A 130, MaReg. 202, Libel 226. See meigne. 

meynt, mixed, LettGlouc. 55. 

miche, much, Epithal. 198. 

mid, amid, FaPrin. G 229. 

Midas, Ecl. 660, 1155. 

Minalcas, speaker in Barclay’s Eclogue iv. 

Minerva, shield of, Ecl. 448*, See Ship 20, 
Ecl. 912, Garl. 808, 1371. 

minishe, to diminish, Ecl. 350. 


AND FINDING LIST 575 


ministrith, administers, Dial. 623. 

mirror, MaReg. 330, Dance 31, 534, 637, Fa- 
Prin. A 159, G 179*, Ship 85*, Cavend. 170, 
1177. 

mirry, merry, Garl. 702, 988, 1001. 

mis, amiss, Bedford 18. 

mo, moo, more, many. 

moch, much. 

mocioun, urging, impulse, Dance 26, 356, Fa- 
Prin. G 274. 

Molins, Anne, Orl. vi*. 

momme, a mumble, Lickp. 31. See Garl. 1096. 

monastic, Pallad. 78*. 

mone, moon, month, Pallad. B 8, C 2. 

Monster, see note Ship 27. 

moordre, etc., murder, FaPrin. C 4, E 49, F 1, 
etc, 

moose, moss, Garl. 23. 

moot, mot, must, may. 

moralise, to interpret, Hawes 752, cp. 1117. 

more, greater, Ship 6976. 

mornyng, mourning, Walton A 252, 297, Lett- 
Glouc. 5, Cavend. 66. 

morowe gray, see note Hawes 97. 

Morpheus, Cavend. 1242, 1422. 

mortalite, death, Libel 13. Earlier than first 
case NED? 

mortail, mortall, aca dealing, Dance 460, 
FaPrin. A SSB: 7. G24 

mortified, injured eae caused the death of, 
MaReg. 212. 

Moryans, Moors, Ship 6970. 

Moses’ horns, Garl. 1348*. 

moost, must, Walton A 5, etc., Garl. 172, 796, 
1070, etc. 

moste, v. might, Walton A 177;—a. greatest, 
FaPrin. G 11, Orl. ix:25. 

mote, must. 

motli, Burgh 23*. 

Mottoes. See Epithal. 112, 161*, Ship 515*. 

motyve, Garl. 114*. 

mought, 0. mene arey 11:63. 

mout, to moult, Ecl. 59. 

mouth he hath, FaPrin. B 50*. 

mowe, may, Walton E 4, 38, MaReg. 148, Orl. 
xi11:28. 

mowght, might, Lickp. 24. 

mowte, v. might, Garl. 425. 

much, great, Shirley II:37. 

multiplye, Libel 538*. 

mummyng, a shen thing, Garl. 200. 

murmur, Garl. 2 

murmyng, error va murnyng, mourning, 
Garl. 344. See 295. 

muse, to ponder, Orl. xxiii:6, Hardyng 17, 
Hawes 109, 268, 303, Nevill 875, Ship 522, Ecl. 
prol. 72, Garl. 8, Morley 18;—s. meditation? 
Garl. 295; —s. opening in a fence or thicket 
made by small animals, Garl. 1351. 

Muses not invoked, Walton A 44*, Ecl. prol. 117, 
Ecl. 755. 

mvym, See momme. 

myt, must, may, FaPrin. B 14, etc., Prohib. 24. 


myche, much. 

mykell, much, Prohib. 76. 

hath mynd, remember, Libel 103. 

myleyne, Milan, Walton A 207. 

myne, to penetrate, Walton B 31, FaPrin. C125. 

myner, Prohib. 90, 93; see mynerue. 

mynerue, Prohib. 39, 

mynnyssheth, diminishes, Libel 391. 

myrrour, Ship 85*. See mirror. 

myry, miry, Garl. 23; —myreth, gets into the 
mire, MaReg. 355. 

mys, amiss, Pallad. 18. 

mys apparayle, improper apparel, Ship 580. 

myschief, misfortune, FaPrin. B 161, G 161, 
Hi 1, Orl. xxi:7, Libel 24, etc. See meschief. 

myschief, misfortune, FaPrin. B 161, Orl. xxi:7, 
Libel 24, etc. See meschief. 

at myscheef, wretchedly, FaPrin. F 21, G 124. 

myschevous, wretched, FaPrin. E 82. 

mysse, amiss, Shirley I:71. 

myst, must, Nevill 194. 

myswent, gone astray, a XVili:26. 

myttes, mites, Prohib. 3 


—n in singular af verb, Orl. xxiii:5. 

na, no, Shirley 1:34. 

nad, ne had, had not, Orl. xv:10. 

Name, request for, see note Thebes 160, Hawes 
129. 


namelych, namely, Shirley 1:59. 

napuls, Naples, Garl. 495. 

Narrative method. See FaPrin. A 92 ff. See 
Gen. Introd. p. 27 ff. 

narwe, narrow, Walton A 213, Roundel 3. 

nas, ne was, was not, Dial. 761, etc. 

Naso, Ovid, Burgh 17. 

naue, ne have, have not, Orl. xii:5, xvii:27. 

Nauern, Navarre, Garl. 495* 

ne, nor, not. 

neaver, never, Prohib. 28, 78. 

nededes, needs, Garl. 1401. 

nedes, necessarily, Libel 146. 

neigh, near, Walton A 19, 377;—to draw near, 
ibid., 385. 

nenpayr, ne enpair, do not impair, Shirley 
II :68. 


neodful, needful, Epithal. 188. 

nept, catnip, Garl. 966. 

ner, nor, Churl 175, 198, 240, 245, 307,Epithal. 
24. 


nere, ne were, were not, Dance 156. 

nere, near, Walton A 385; —nearer, Hawes 302, 
Ecl. 105, Cavend. 1382. 

Nero, Walton A 89*, Morley 151. 

netheles, nevertheless, Lickp. 11. 

neven, to name, tell, Burgh 33. 

nevewe, nephew, FaPrin. BS: 

newe fonde londe, Newfoundland, Ship 6969*. 

of newe, anew, recently, Dance 591, FaPrin. 
PANS: 

newous, annoying, see Orl. xix: 8, 16, and the 
French of the Paris MS. 

newtriall, neutral, Prohib. 88*. 

nexst, next, so spelt by Shirley. 


576 SELECT GLOSSARY 


ney, neygh, greens near, Walton A 29, 267, 346; 
—nearly, Walton D 63. 

nichil habet, LettGlouc. 52*. 

nifles, Libel 341", 

nightirtale, night-time, MaReg. 306. 

nill, ne will, will not, Shirley 11:43, Pallad. 56. 

Nine Orders, FaPrin. C 69*. 

Nine Worthies, Epithal. 134*. 

nis, ne is, is not. 

nobles, gold coins, Libel 34*, 44, 408, Shirley 
1:86, 11:40; —members of the nobility, Cay- 
end. 1399. See LettGlouc. 17*. 

nobles, nobleness, excellence, FaPrin. A 425, 
C1355 074; D 86, E 88, G53. 243, Hawes 
4420, Ship 8508, Cavend. 1145. 

nobleye, nobility, Bedford 26. 

noght, not. 

noght for thye, not forthi, nevertheless, Wal- 
ton A 31, E 19, 47. 

noie, to annoy, injure, FaPrin. D 83. 

nold, ne wold, would not, Walton A 179, etc. 

nolle, the noddle, top of the head, Thebes 32. 

nomo, no more, Orl. Vill:7. 

nons, nonys, in phrase for the nonys, Garl. 
267*, Prohib. 63, Cavend. 216, 225. 

noot, see not. 

nore, nor, Ship 8503. 

note, not, ne wot, know not, MaReg. 329, Dial. 
619, Thebes 68, "Dance 81, Shirley I: 67, Orl. 
xviii:14, 

nother, nor, Prohib. 35. 

notty, heady, foaming, Thebes 110. Only ci- 
tation NED of this variant of nappy, noppy. 

notyd, marked, Mass 149. 

nouelrie, novelty, MaReg. 38. 

nought, not, Shirley I:4, “Libel 110. 

noumbre, number, FaPrin. D 12. 

nouthir, neither, Dance 209, etc., Epithal. 34, 
Mass 34, 149, Ship 116. 

noverca, see under stepmother, FaPrin. D 30*. 

“Now,” etc., see note FaPrin. C 88. 

as nowe, at once, Dial. 621. 

nowghtty pakkis, Garl. 188*. 

nowrd, north, Lickp. 29. 

noye, to annoy, Libel 553. 

noyous, annoying, wearisome, Orl. xviii:1, xix: 
24, 28*, Morley 26. 

noyse, fame, publicity, FaPrin. B 93, 119; — 
to make public, Nevill 73. 

Numydy, Numidia,onthe north coast of Africa, 
Ship 6970. 

nuwe, new, Epithal. 60. 

of nuwe, recently, Bycorne 113. 

nyce, foolish, stupid, MaReg. 204, Dance 389. 

modal 31 stupidity, folly, MaReg. 45, 404, Nev- 
ill dia 

nyen, nine, ‘Epithal. 134. 

ny3, nigh, near, Thebes 93. 

anyht, at night, FaPrin. G 237. 

nys, ne is, is not, Dance 196, Orl. xvi:8, etc., 
xxi:l. 

Nysus, for Nilus, the Nile, Hawes 338. 

nyw, new, Orl. vii:10. 


o, a, Walton C 36, etc. 

Oo, on, 00, oone, one, Walton E 157, Churl 204, 
217, 346, Dance 56, 160, 176, 226, 400, 585, 
Thebes 60, 67, FaPrin. A 409, 442, B35, E72, 
F 11, 20, 27, Reproof 14, Orl. viii: 10, xiii :22, 
Prohib. 17, 64, 96, 100, Garl. 90. See oon. 

obeisaunce, obedience, FaPrin. E 65, 93, Orl. 
viii:6, Libel 165, Garl. 820, Cavend. "1345. 

obeyand, obeying, Hardyng 6. 

oblacion, voluntary offering, Dance 532. 

obscure, difficult to understand, Hawes 663* 
753;—dark, Ship 69, Cavend. 23; ;—mean? 
Ship 606. NED has this sense only for Rene 

obtundythe, dulls, overpowers, Ripley 2 

occupy, to use, Ship 252F: 

ociosite, idleness, Cavend. 47; see note ibid., 
24-30. 

Octavian, FaPrin. C 19, F, Cavend. epit. 32. 

oder, other, Nevill 214. 

odible, odious, FaPrin. G 316. 

of, off, FaPrin. D 68, G 301, 320, Mass 157, Pro- 
hib. 38, Hawes 4352, Cavend. 1294. 

off, of, Epithal. 38, FaPrin. A 44, 463, etc.,H 11, 
13, 25, 25, 26, 33, 34, Reproof 20, Ripley 36, Pro- 
hi 

off ee newly, recently, FaPrin. H 13. 

ofte sone, eftsoons, afterward, Libel 413. 

of tymes, ofttimes, Orl. i:11, iv A:5, cp. B 4. 

Oldcastle, Hardyng 8*. 

oliphaunt, elephant, Garl. 102. 

Omer, Omerus, Homer, FaPrin. K3,16, Burgh 
16; see Garl. 329. 

on, see o. 

after one, on one pattern, Ecl. 102. 

onely, only. 

all onely, only, Hawes 1347. 

ones, ons, onys, oonis, once, Dance 20,Lickp. 
111, FaPrin. A 327, B 42, D 14, Orl. vi:6, 8, 
xiii:2, Libel 136, 143, Garl. 269, 282, 1447, 
1466, Cavend. 146, 237, Noe 88. 

onipotent, omnipotent, Ship 

onlefull, unlawful, Cavend. A 35, 1333; 

on lyue, alive, Shirley 11:85. 

onocentauris, ass-men, Garl. 1261. 

onto, unto, Pallad. 22 ; 

ontwyne, ontwynned, to untwine, etc., i.e., 
to terminate, FaPrin. C 55, Cavend. 1291. 

onworthe, unworthy, Cavend. 50. 

onys, see ones. 

oo, Oh! FaPrin. E 40, 48. 

oon, one, Walton A 174, 179, FaPrin. G 234, 
291. Seeo. 

euer in oone, forever, Dance 3. 

oon the, one of the, Walton A 174*, Epithal. 
123*, FaPrin. E 90 

oonli, only. F 

oost, host, Dance 160;—a crowd, Orl. xix:10. 

opon, upon, Pallad. 21 

opposelle, Garl. 114*. 

Opposites. See note Garl. 1358. See p. 164. 

or, ere, Walton E 30, MaReg. 29, 226, 292, 293, 
376, 444, Dial. 575, 648, 652, 793, Dance 226, 
231, 440, FaPrin. A 286, 301, Mass 192, Shir- 


AND FINDING LIST ae 


ley 11:3, 67, Orl. xxii:12, Hawes 746, Nevill 35, 
Ecl. prol. 30, 52, Fcl. 812, 1143, Garl. 525, 
Cavend. 171, 191, 215, Morley 112. 

Orace, Horace, Burgh 20, Ecl. prol. 85, Garl. 
352. 


orbicular, s. circuit, orbit, Garl. 4 

order, in the phrase ‘ “by ordre” » see ‘Shirley I 226%; 
Roundel 3*; cp. Morley 209. 

Orders Nine, see Nine. 

ordeynyng, preparation, Hawes 4406. 

ordreur, order, Hardyng 124 

ore, oar, Ship 82. 

orient, Eastern, Garl. 485, 932. 

orisouns, orations, FaPrin. G 184, 224. 

Orleans and Anne Molins, Orl. vi. 

Orlience, Orleans, Hardyng 85. See pp. 221 ff., 
for texts of Orleans; see Pallad. 60 and note. 

orloger, timekeeper, Thebes 122. 

ormogenes, Hermogenes, Burgh 10*. 

orpement, Prohib. 24*. 

Orpheus, see Walton D; see Garl. 272. 

ortagrafyure, orthography, Shirley I1:70. 

osay, Libel 132*. 

o syde, aside, Orl. viii:11. 

other, or, Churl 151. For rime on “‘other”’ see 
FaPrin. G 34-35*. 

others, udders, Ecl. 148. 

othre, others, FaPrin. G 88. 

oueral, everywhere, Pallad. 63, Ship 107. 

ouerblowe, passed like a wind, Walton C 23. 

ouercharge, to overload, Ship 77. 

ouergo, to outstrip, Nevill 45. 

Ouersayne, guilty of an oversight, Churl 269. : 

ouerthwart, contrary, Garl. 307. 

ought, is owing to, Ecl. 850. 

ougly, ugly, Dance 32. 

Quid, Ouyd, Ovid, FaPrin. A 324, K 18, Nev- 
ill 2, Nevill envoy 12, Garl. 93, 333. 

oure, hour, Walton A 284, Dance 619, Reproof 
10 


Out! an ejaculation, Walton A 277. 

oute, aught, Walton A 117. 

outerage, outrage, Walton B 3. 

with outhyn, without, Orl. vii:9. 

outher, or, FaPrin. G 201, Mass; 158;—either, 
Ship 76, 89, 237. 

outraie, to surpass, defeat, Bycorne 123, Fa- 
Prin. G 128, Garl. 156. 

outrarious, outrageous, FaPrin. C 4, 9. 

ower, our, Prohib. 10, 90, 91. 

owght, out, Garl. 153, 221, 735. 

Oxenford, Oxford, Pallad. 89. 

oynons, onions, Libel 522. 


pace, to pass, Dance 72, 656, FaPrin. H 5. 

a pace, briskly, Hawes 20, Cavend. 188. 

Padding Phrases, see pp. 88-89. 

paiauntis, pageants, Garl. 1350. 

pakkis, Garl. 189*. 

Palamydes, Mass 185*. 

palen, to make pale, Mass 84. 

pall, a rich cloth, a canopy, Ecl. 444, Garl. 474. 

Pallas, Hawes 170, Ship 20*, 102, Garl. 284 and 
passim. 


pamflete, pamphlet, Hawes 1300. See Churl 
35, Garl. 1169. 

Pandarus, Garl. 856. 

pantere, a swoop-net, Churl 77, etc.;—a clerk 
of the pantry, Hawes 423. 

papelay, popingay, a parrot, Roundel 3. 

paradise to see, etc., see note Epithal. 99. 

parage, rank, lineage, Dance 8. 

cas, perchance, for example, Dance 411, 

FaPrin. G 284 (note the tautology). 

pares a little, partly, Thebes 124, FaPrin. 


parde, par Dieu, MaReg. 363, Dial.509,Thebes 
125, Reproof 67, Or]. xvii:17, ’Ecl. 91, 309, 461, 
Garl. 95, 1209, Cavend. 172, 257. See Morley 
71, 181; 

paregall, fully equal, Garl. 883. 

parelouse, perilous, Walton A 87, B 32. 

parfit, parfyte, perfect, complete, FaPrin. K 26, 
Burgh 9, Hawes dedic. 31, Ecl. prol. 67, 78, 
etc. 

parfourm, to complete, Epithal. 120, FaPrin. 
D 49. See performe. 

Paris, son of Priam, Epithal. 135, Ecl. 1109, 
Morley 217. 

parker, park-keeper, Garl. 1353. 

Parnassus, see note Walton A 58. See Cav- 
end 69. See pernaso. 

parody, term of life, FaPrin. E 42*, 83. 

parseyve, to perceive, Orl. xx:6. 

what part, wherever, Orl. xvii:22. 

parten, to divide, Orl. xix:9. 

partes, profits, Libel 513. 

partie, a part, i.e., geographical division, Fa- 
Prin. G 91;—part, side, Churl 204, FaPrin. 
A 315, C27, G 181, Burgh 12, Mass 168, 188, 
Orl. xii:29, xvii:6; —direction, Dance 161;— 
party, case, FaPrin. G 167, ?271; —parti- 
colored, Ship 8483;—resistance, head against, 
Dial. 691. 

partyng, departure, Dance 215. 

Pasiphae, see Garl. 827*, 910*, 1026*. 

passyng well, more than well, Orl. xviii:7, etc. 
See Dance 251. 

passyoun, martyrdom, Shirley 1:35. 

past, pastry, Churl 151 

past not, etc., cared not, Cavend. 102, 128, 159. 

pasture, food, feeding-place, Bycorne 12, 17, 
83, Churl 123*, Thebes 101, 104. 

pate, top of the head, Cavend. 1186*. 

patere, to patter, repeat the paternoster rap- 
idly, murmur rapidly, Thebes 163. 

patin, Ecl. 448*. 

Patronage. See Gen. Introd. pp. 6, 15, 35; see 
under Gloucester. See p. 95. 

paunflete, pamphlet, Churl 35. See Hawes 
1300, Garl. 1169. 

pautner, a wallet, scrip, Ecl. 7. 

Pauye, Pavia, FaPrin. H 28. 

pawkener, or pautner, Prohib. 75. 

paye, pleasure, Walton A 201, 340, Horns 46, 
Shirley I1:62;—». to please, Walton B 2. 

payne, ‘effort, Hawes 146, 441. See cure in 
7 


578 SELECT GLOSSARY 


paynfull, Cavend. epitaph 4. 

paynyms, pagans, Hawes 191. 

payse, to weigh, Walton C 12. See peyse. 

peakes, lofty headgear, Ship 555. See introd. 
to Horns Away. 

peare, s. peer, Hawes 220. See pe 

Pegase, Pegasus, FaPrin. D io", Haves 123, 
See Ecl. 881. 

pegases, of Pegasus, Burgh 2. 

peise, to weigh, Bedford 23. 

peisid, weighed, FaPrin. E 13, F 27. 

peisith, vo. imper., weigh, FaPrin. C 122. 

pele, appeal, Dance 365. 

pen, see quaking pen. 

pencyfe, pensive, Nevill 43. 

Penelope, wife of Ulysses, Horns 27, Dance 
452*, Mass 182, Garl. 883. 

pennes, feathers, Walton E 121. 

penselle, Garl. 1075*. 

pentice, penthouse, Roundel 3*. 

perambulat, circuitous, Hawes 684. 

perambulucion, circumlocution, Hawes 4431. 

Percius, Perseus, Hawes 125;—Persius, Garl. 
338. See Burgh 20. 

Percy, Persia, Ecl. 1106. 

perdurable, ofenduring strength,Walton A 322, 
Hawes 30. 

perdye, see parde. 

pere, s. peer, Hawes 339, 1328, Shirley 1:30. See 
peare. 

perelus, perilous, Walton A 136, perlious, 
Churl 181. 

performe, to complete, Mass 170, Ship 7002. 
See parforme. 

pernaso, Parnassus, FaPrin. A eo 458, D 13, 
G 10, K 52, Burgh 1; see Nevill 2 

perre, perry, Churl 259*, Horns ot 

Pers de Mounte, Pailad. 102-104*. 

persaunt, keen, piercing, Burgh 46 (adj. used as 
subst?). 

personage, parsonage, Dance 321. 

peruerse, adverse, FaPrin. A 259. 

pery, blast of wind, Hawes 68, 1254. 

pescods, peascods, Lickp. 67. 

pese, to be in peace, Orl. xiii:2. 

Pestilence, see note Cavend. 119; see Dance 429. 

pet, a breaking of wind, Ecl. 694. Only cita- 
tion : 

Peter’s cope, Ecl. 447*, 1141. 

Petrarch. See FaPrin. A 257, Ecl. prol. 35, 
Garl. 380. See Burgh 13. 

Petrake, FaPrin. A 257*, K 37. 

peuishe, peevish, silly, stupid, Garl. 266, 620, 
see 631. 

peyce, weight, Churl 314. 

peyse, weight? piece? Libel 398;—to weigh, 
Churl 312. 

peysith, to weigh, Churl 234, 318. See peisid. 

peysyble, peaceable, Bycorne 107. 

Phebus passing the stars, see Sun. 

Phedra, Morley 176; see note Garl. 910. 

Philip Sparrow, see note Garl. 1227. 

Philologie, FaPrin. D 66*, see Epithal. 179*. 

phisionomye, physiognomy, Pallad. 87*. 


phitones, Pythoness, Garl. 1311*. 

Phocion, Cavend, epitaph 21. 

Phylogeny, error for Philology, Epithal. 179*. 

picture, image, Hawes 50, 70. 

Pierides, FaPrin. D 6am Garl. 674. 

pietous, merciful, Ripley 5. 

pieusaunce, puissance, Cavend. 1343, 

pieusaunt, puissant, Cavend. epitaph 28. 

pieuselles, pucelles, maidens, Cavend. 1400. 
See pucell. 

pike, Pallad. 50*. 

piked, picked, Thebes 56. 

pikoys, pickaxe, Dance 84, 557. 

pilche, a leather or coarse wool outer garment, 
Ecl. 210, 384. 

piler, pillar, MaReg. 8. 

pillion, a hat or cap, Ecl. 343. Lat. pilleus. 

pillours, robbers, Libel 163. 

pine, pain, Garl. 1345. See pyne. 

piplyng, gently moving, Garl. 670*, First case 

D 


Pirrus, Ecl. 1103*, Cavend. epitaph 4. 

pirus, Burgh 3*. 

Pisandros, Garl. 383. 

Pistoye, Pistoja, FaPrin. G 114. 

Pithagoras, Ecl. 479*. 

pitous, piteous, FaPrin. F 22, etc 

pithth, pith, essence, strength, spirit, Epithal. 
30. 


plage, region, Ship 6959. 
platly, plainly, Dance 641, Thebes 142%. See 


ple 

pee BBE G 173-182*, Garl. 126, Cavend. 
epitaph 13. 

Plautus, Garl. 354. 

playn, smooth, Churl 50, 137, Hawes 45, 269; 
—to complain, Churl 245, 283, FaPrin. G 159. 

plees, pleas, Ship 206. 

plenerly, fully, Walton E 114, Garl. 6. 

plentyuouse, abundant, Hardyng 3D: 

plesere, pleasure, Orl. xiv:15. 

plete, etc., to plead a cause, to talk, Dance 466, 
FaPrin. G 156, 162, Orl. 10 

pleye, to make sport, Mass 8 

ples to complain, Ronee 1;—a. full, Pal- 

d. 21, Orl. xvi:18. See playn. 

ae plainly, Thebes 71, 138. See plasigs 

pleyntiff, Mass 146. 

pleyntis, complaints, Roundel 2, FaPrin. G 199. 

pliades, the Pleiades, Garl. 691. 

Plinius, Pliny, Ship 6995*, " 
lummet, a pencil? Pallad. A 3*. First case 
NED 1634. 

plummouth, Plymouth, Garl. 513. 

plumpe, a group, sae 258. 

Plutarch, Garl. 3 

Pluto, Garl, 089, qe 239. 

pockes, pox, venereal ‘oe Ship 593. 

poecy, poetry, Ecl. 

Poet, function of, see ae Ship 134. 

Poggeus, Poggio, Garlh373%: 

points, Libel 57*. 

poise, poesy, Burgh 39. 

poites, poets, Churl 29. 


AND FINDING LIST 579 


pokok, peacock, Garl. 103. 

Polexemes, see Polyceene, Morley 198. 

Policius, FaPrin. G 140*. 

Policrates, Ecl. 1096*. 

poliphemus, Polyphemus, FaPrin. D 20. 

Politic, Pallad. 78* 

pollers, extortioners, Ship 30, 126. 

cee Polyxena, Horns 28*, Dance 451, 
Epithal. 72, Mass 182, Garl. 855*, See Mor- 
ley 198. 

pomaunder, Garl. 1007*. 

pompe, Ship 156*. 

Pompeie, Pompey, Epithal. 153, FaPrin. G 189, 
268, Ecl. 1083, Cavend. epitaph 28. 

ponyschement, punishment, Walton E 88. 

pope holy, Garl. 606*. 

poperyng, Popering, Libel 249*, 252. 

popingay, parrot, Churl 359*, Hawes 4225. 
See papelay. 

por, poor, Mass 146. 

poraill, poor people, FaPrin. H 12. 

porcyus, Persius, Burgh 20. See Percius. 

porisshly, peeringly, with half-shut eyes, Garl. 
620. 


porpos, porpoise, Ecl. 213. 

port, bearing, Dance 167. 

port salu, safe haven, To Somer 22, Garl. 541. 

portismouth, Portsmouth, Garl. 513. 

portoos, Thebes 162*. 

portyngale, Portugal, Garl. 494. 

possede, to possess, Dance 126, 132. 

posty, pouste, power, Garl. 1298. 

potshorde, fragment of a broken earthen pot, 
Garl. 1189. 

pouer, power, Walton A 85. 

pouert, poverty, Walton A 81*. 

pourveyed of, equipped with, Epithal. 124. 

Powle hatchettis, Garl. 607*. 

Powles, Paul’s, St. Paul’s, Ecl. 451*. 

Powles heed, Paul’s Head, a tavern sign, Ma- 
Reg. 143. 

poyle, Apulia, Garl. 493*. 

poynt, to appoint, Garl. 420, 432, 1121;—s. 
point. See Libel 57*. 

poysy, poetry, FaPrin. K 26. 

practik, Walton A 330, 332*, Dance 427, Pal- 
lad. 76. 

pratily, praty, pretty, etc., Churl 81, Orl. xxii: 
10, Garl. 896, 965, 1215. 

praysable, laudable, Nevill 165, 218. 

prebende, Dance 313*, 326, 596. 

prece, see press. 

precedentes, signs, Nevill 60. 

precell, to excel, Cavend. 1162. 

in preciouste, as of value, Walton E 98. 

preeff, proof, test, FaPrin. G 310, Libel 99;— 
v. to prove, Orl. xvi:13. 

preent, print, Epithal. 30, 60. 

preferre, to advance to dignity, FaPrin. A 251, 
361, G 207, Cavend. 157. 

premynence, preéminence, Horns 53, Hawes 
124, Garl. 50, 1103. 

prepence, to plan, intend, Nevill 77;—to con- 
sider, Nevill envoy 12. 


preperate, prepared, Prohib. 44. 

presid in a pace, hastened up, Garl. 1122. 

press, put (one’sself) in, to press forward, en- 
deavor, Garl. 239*, 778. 

prest, ready, hasty, Dial. 553, Pallad. 47, Orl. 
v:10, Garl. 774, Ecl. prol. 56, Cavend. 1271; — 
s.aloan, Dance 159. 

Ereeeece, assertion, reason, Garl. 801, Cavend. 
133 

pretende, to offer, Ecl. 929. 

pretory, a hall or palace, Garl. 477. 

preuyd, proved, Dial. 566, Reproof 60, FaPrin. 
Ell. See prouyd. 

prevayle, to avail, Cavend. 1128, 1139. 

preventid, anticipated, Garl.428, Cavend. 145*. 

Priamus, Ecl. 1107. 

price, see pris. 

pried, peeped, looked, Ecl. 18. 

prike, FaPrin. K 28*. 

prime, Thebes 124*, Dance 230*. See pryme. 

prime rose, primrose, Garl. 1414. 

principio, Prohib. 25* 

pris, prys, highest esteem, Thebes 46, Burgh 
24, Shirley 1:33, Lickp. 66. 

prise, prisse, value, quality, Walton A 108, 
Churl 252, FaPrin. A 294, 409. 

priuate, deprived of, Ecl. 708. 

priuee, privately, MaReg. 270. 

probable, evident, Hawes 1266. 

probacion, experience, proof, Dial. 735, Libel 
381, Ship 179. 

probate, test, Broo! Hawes 697;—interpreta- 
tion, Garl. 3 

procede, to be legal process, Lickp. 6. 

proces, ordered material, Garl. 28;—narrative 
or argumentative presentation, ‘Dance 465, 
FaPrin. A 127, 453, B 160, Cu Ke) Garl. 
803, 1077. 

bi processe, in the course of events, FaPrin. B7, 
etc. 

Procession as a motif, see p. 126, 151. 

profe, proof, Nevill 25, 

proferryng, i.e., preferring, FaPrin. C 25. 

proiecte, projected, Ripley 171. 

projection, Ripley 190*. 

prolle, to prowl, seek advantage from, Dial. 
744, 


Prologue, see Walton 1*. 

promocioune, advocacy, Garl. 71. 

promotyve, promotion, Garl. 116. 

pronostik, prognostic, FaPrin. G 176. 

Pronunciation, FaPrin. G 193*. 

prop, pole, Garl. 1307. 

proper, propre, pretty, Garl. 968, 1359, 1414; 
—one’s own, Hawes 311. 

Propertius, Garl. 383. 

prophitroles, ? Ecl. 405*. 

proplexyte, perplexity, Garl. 1336. 

Prose in this volume, see Epistle of Lover’s Mass, 
see dedic. letter of Morley. 

Proserpine, FaPrin. C 90. 

prospeccyon, a view, Nevill 116. 

Protheus, Proteus, Ecl. 887. 


580 SELECT GLOSSARY 


prothonotary, protonotary, a principal notary 
or chief clerk, Garl. 432. 

prouect, to carry forward, send forward, Pallad. 
71. NED first 1652. 

proueth, tests, Nevill 162. See Prohib. 36. 

prouyng, testing, Ecl. prol. 29. 

prouision, foresight, Ecl. 866. 

proute, proud, Walton C 9*, 

Proverbs, see note Thebes 51. 

prow, advantage, Bycorne 113, Dance 557. 

pryce, value, Ripley 168. See pris. 

pryme, prime, Garl. 525. See prime. 

pryncypalyte, supremacy, Nevill 838. 
ryuely, privately, Orl. iv A:5, B:4. 

Pisa see Tholomeus. 

publius, Libel 479*. 

pucell, damsel, Hawes passim. See pieusell. 

pulcritude, beauty, Hawes 24. 

pullisshe, to polish, Garl. 83, 421, 800. 

Punctuation, see Preface; see Ecl. prol introd. 

punsshe, to punish, FaPrin. A 198, F 6, G 127. 

purpartye, proportion or share, FaPrin. E 80. 

purpos, the point, Churl 372. 

Purpose in writing. See Hawes 1313*, Ship 134- 
7*, Cavend. 24-30*. 

purpure, purple, Walton B 9. 

purseuantis, pursuivants, messengers, Garl. 
492*. 

pursue, to persecute, Walton A 107, 167;—to 
pursue, Walton E 16. 

purueyaunce, management, foresight, Dance 
405, FaPrin. E 86, G 110, Hawes 1260. 

pusaunce, power, Libel 218, 537, Hawes 4322. 

pusaunt, puissant, Garl. 50. 

put back, thwart, Mass 35. 

put case, to raise ‘the question of, Reproof 57. 

putrefaccyon, putrefaction, Ripley 194, see 
190*. 


putryfye, to putrefy, Prohib. 96, see 190*. 

pycche, to set, Walton E 121. 

pye, magpie, Hawes 1111. 

pyke, to pick, Garl. 1189. 

pykers, thieves, Ship 126. 

pyl, pile, the obverse of a coin, LettGlouc. 59. 

pylled, bald, Thebes 32. 

pyment, sweet wine, Walton B 8. 

pynacles, Hawes 309*. 

pynchid nat, raised no question, MaReg. 181. 

pyne, pain, Walton E75. See pine. 

Pink pee pinkeyed, smalleyed or squint-eyed, 
ar 

pynned, bolted, barred, Churl 120. 

pyrlynge, pirling, | twisting, Garl. 780. 

Pyrrus, Ecl. 1108* 


quacham, Ecl. 423. Only citation NED; no 
definition. 

quadrant, foursquare, Nevill 121, 177. 

quadriuial, Pallad. 76*. 

Quaking hand or pen, LettGlouc. 4, FaPrin. 
B 142, D 46*, G 42. 

quarter, Garl. 504*. 

qQuayeer, quair, song or poem, Churl 379, Garl. 
1484. See “Go little book”’. 


qd, quod, said. 
ae ie., quadrans, a half-farthing, Ecl. prol. 
14. 


queint, extinguished, FaPrin. D 60. See qweynt. 

queinte, artful? FaPrin. D 27. 

quemyd, appeased, pleased, FaPrin. B 125. 

quere, choir, Ship 553. 

querele, quarrel, cause, Dance 83. 

queste, to give tongue together, Garl. 1376. 

queveryng, uncertain, FaPrin. E 96. 

quik, to enliven, FaPrin. D 34; —in lifelike man- 
ner, Garl. 142, 1139; see 592. 

Quintilian, Burgh 13, Garl. 326. 

Quintus Cursus, Q. Curtius, Garl. 366. 

quit, free, Dance 416. 

quite, to requite, repay, Dial. 578, Dance 488, 
629, FaPrin. A 290, G 308; —to bear one’s 
self, Dance 480; —to acquit, FaPrin. A 290. 

quook, quaked, shook, FaPrin. B 148. 

qweynt, extinguished, blotted out, MaReg. 349, 

qwynt essence, quintessence, LettGlouc. AT 
qwyte, quit, emptyhanded, Burgh 12. 


rabyll, rabble, Garl. 1279. See Ecl. 680. 

race, to erase, Churl 301, Garl. 72. See rasid. 

rad, etc., to read, Walton A 331, Horns 44, Fa- 
Prin. A 13 BiG 108, K 20, Mass 183. 

rade, to remove, Pallad. 7. 

ragman rollis, Garl. 1455*. 

railles, Garl. 1135*. 

raist, arrayest, l.e., treatest, Garl. 317. 

rakil, unstable, reckless, MaReg. 83, Dial. 655. 

rampyng, rampant, Hawes 4233 

rascolde, rascally, Ecl. 680, 689. 

rasid, etc., to erase, Ecl. prol. 63, Garl. 137, 
1445, 1455, 1533. See race. 

raskaille, vile rabble, FaPrin. C 98. 

rate, manner, Ecl. prol. 103, Garl. 1108, 1229, 
1488. 

rathe, hasty, soon, Walton A 268, D 62, Cavend. 
150, 1184. 

rather, earlier, former, Walton B 1. 

ratifye, to confirm truth of, consummate? 
Hawes 676. 

raught, reached, caught, Thebes 158, Dance 561. 

raunge, range, Garl. 25. on the range,at lib- 
erty? 

ray, a striped cloth, Lickp. 42*, Ship 478. 

rayde, arrayed, Ship 570. 

raynes, kidneys or loins Ship 514; —Rennes, 
Cavend. 247*. 

Raysoun, Reason, Epithal. 89. 

real, royal, MaReg. 430. 

ream, realm, Libel 19, 174, 385. 

reason, see resoun. 

rebawdis, ribald fellows; Garl. 601. 

rebuke, to repel, repulse, Ecl. 930, —s. Libel 
535% 


receyt, receipt, Epithal. 40. 

recheles, reckless, Garl. 1360. 

reclyne, to lean on, Pallad. 86. 

reclus, a prisoner, LettGlouc. 59. 
reconcile, to restore, FaPrin. G 262, 276. 
reconusaunce, acknowledgment, Garl. 822. 


AND FINDING LIST 581 


recorde, to take note, FaPrin. E 104. 

recounfortyd, comforted, Garl. 359. 

recours, course, Walton E 145. 

recule, recueil, collection of writings, Hawes 
180, Garl. 1165, 1357. 

recure, to recover, heal, obtain, Churl 207, 326, 
Dance 311*, 424, LettGlouc. 39, FaPrin. B 91, 
E 20, Mass 137, Nevill dial. 41. 

rede, redde, etc., to advise, MaReg. 35, 86, 91, 
105, 382, Dial. 719, 801, Reproof 77, Orl. xxii: 
1; —advice, Chur] 155, Dial. 619. 

reduce, to lead back, Walton E 158, Ship 589. 

redyng, Walton A 253*. 

reed, read, FaPrin. G 203, 228;—advice, Ma- 
Reg. 108, Dial. 722. 

Reference Lists:—I, to Gen. Introd., p. 38; II, 
to Walton, p. 41; III, to Hoccleve, p. 57; IV, 
to Bycorne, p. 115; V, to the Dance Macabre, 
p. 130; VI, to the Epithalamium, p. 145; VII, 
to the Reproof, p. 199; VIII, to Palladius, p. 
203; IX, to the Mass, p. 210; X, to the Libel, 
p. 244; XI, to Hawes, p. 270; XII, to Nevill, 
p. 288; XIII, to Barclay, p. 298; XIV, to the 
Ship of Fools, p. 299; XV, to the Eclogue, p. 
313; XVI, to Skelton, p. 340; XVII, to Mor- 
ley, p. 385. See Bibliographies. 

reffuce, outcast, FaPrin. B 116. 

reflareth, distils, Hawes 1262. See Garl. 961. 

refluent, back-flowing, Pallad. 12 

reformacion, correction, Garl. 145. 

refrayne, to draw back, hold back, bridle, Wal- 
ton A 114, MaReg. 338, Orl. xvi:21, Nevill 127, 
Ship 32, Ecl. 82, 90, 808. 

refute, refuge, Dance 163, 

regestary, registrar, Garl. 522. See Garl. 1119. 

regraciatory, thanks, Garl. 431. NED gives 
Skelton only. 

rehersall, mention, Garl. 1468. 

reise, journey? profit? Libel 399, 

rekne, rekune, to reckon. 

relacions, narratives, Libel 511; see Hawes 231. 

release, to relieve, Hawes 4346. 

releef, to relieve, Orl. xxi:6. 

relent, to yield, melt, Cavend. 1275. See Troy 
Book ii:5077. 

reles, s. release, relief, Mass 109. 

relucent, gleaming, Garl. 934. 

relyke here, remaining heir, Cavend. 1406. 

reme, realm, Hardyng 5, Garl. 742. 

remedeles, without remedy, Garl. 1361. 

remevyng, unstable, moving, FaPrin. C 86. 

remorde, to carp at, rebuke, Garl. 86. 

remue, remuwe, to remove, swerve, Epithal. 
24, FaPrin. A 231. 

remyse, remission, Cavend. 1160. 

renett, rennet, Prohib. 57*. 

renne, etc., to run, Walton B 11, D 8, MaReg. 
78, Dial. 746, Nevill 140, 145, Ship 8443. 

renomaunce, renown, Orl. xvi:9. 

renommed, renoumyd, renowned, Horns 26, 
Epithal. 79, 127, FaPrin. G 67. 

renoueld, renewed, Shirley 1:94. 

renude, renewed. 


repair, a coming, frequenting, return, MaReg. 
137, FaPrin. E15, G 245;—to supply, Cavend. 
1107; —a visit, Libel 61, 503; —to return, Re- 
proof 65, Mass 81, 82. 

repentine, sudden, Nevill 97. 

repete, recital, Garl. 1357. 

repreef, reproof, discredit, injury, Dial. 671, 
FaPrin. G 312. 

reprehende, to reprove? Pallad. 16. 

repugnaunce, opposition, Garl. 211. 

reputing it for, imputing it to, Cavend. 53. 

requeere, to require, FaPrin. G 199. 

rerage, arrears, LettGlouc. 6. 

rere warde, back entrance, Garl. 1352. 

rescws, rescue, Dance 278. 

resemblance, mirror, pattern, Dance 639. 

reseruyd, put aside, Garl. 1168. 

residewe, residue, FaPrin. D 50, etc. 

Reson and Sensuality, see Cavend. 1348*. 

resorte, to return, Churl 178, Dance 325, Fa- 
Prin. A 191, C 68; —s. visitation, Pallad. 23. 
See FaPrin. C 101. 

resoun, reason, a word or saying, ?Walton 
E 72, FaPrin. G 17*, Garl. 10; —subject- 
matter, Ecl. 286, Ecl. prol. 10; —order or 
decorum, FaPrin. B 110, G 194;—to talk, 
address, Orl. xvii:4, Garl. 1101, Morley 169, 
(where Petrarch has ragionar). 

respire, to recover (hope or courage), Ecl.1080. 

respite, to interrupt, Walton A252;—to hold 
back, FaPrin. B 101. 

reste, to arrest, Dance 137, 567. 

is reste, remains? Pallad. B 1 

restrayn, to hold back, Walton D 57, Libel 92. 

retaylle, Cavend. 143*, 

retayne, to maintain, Ecl. 222. 

retenew, retinue, maintenance, Garl. 238. 

retorryke, rhetoric, Shirley 1:31. 

retrogradaunt, retrograde, Garl. 3*, Cavend. 4. 

reuerent, dignified, Walton A 305. 

reuers, reverse, Dial. 735 

reule, rule, Hardyng 124. See mene reule. 

reuolde, rolled or revolved, Garl. 658. 

reward, to regard or look, Dance 331, Orl. xii:19; 
—reward? Walton B 24, Shirley I1:44; —s. 
regard, Dance 331. 

rewdisshe, rewde, rude, Orl. xiii:14, xvii:12. 

rewe, rue, to have pity, Mass 87. 

rewlyd, ruled, Orl. 1x:6. 

rewme, realm, Walton E 89, FaPrin. E 67. See 
reme, ream 

rewyn, ruin, Cavend. 1317. 

Rhetorical Theory. See Colors of Rhetor 
Description by Order, Lists, Prologue. 

riall, royal, Hardyng 40. 

rialte, royalty, Dance 108. 

ribaudye, ribaldry, Thebes 25. 

Richard II, Hardyng 36. 

Richard Hermyte, see FaPrin. K 27*. 

riff, rife, current, Churl 372, FaPrin. G 205. 

right, to make right, Pallad. 124. 

now right, just now, Epithal. 158. 

right wise, righteous, Ecl. 1013. See Dance 
629. 


582 SELECT GLOSSARY 


nie fierce, cruel, Hawes 166, 4237, Fcl. 
1076* 

rigure, ‘rigor, Orl. xv:15. 

riht, right; —very, FaPrin. H 14;—a. direct, 

FaPrin. G 66. 

rihtis, rites, FaPrin. C 75. 

Rime on -tA, see -th; of -/t: -ght, see Orl. xix. 

rin, to run, Garl. 1401, 1448. 

rise, rice flour, Lickp. 71. 

risshes, rushes for floor coverings, Roundel 2, 
Lickp. 86. 

Robin Hood, Ship 13874-88*, Ecl. 721, Mor- 
ley dedic. 

roche alom, rock alum, Libel 328. 

rochis, roaches, fish, Garl. 655. 

roffes, roofs, Cavend. 106*. 

Rolle, Richard, see Richard Hermyte. 

romain, Roman, FaPrin. G 157. 

Romayn dedis, the Gesta Romanorum, Dial. 
820*. 

ronne, run, Pallad. D 1, Libel 173, Cavend. 1301. 

roof described, Hawes 348-50*, Cavend. 106*. 

rooff, pierced, FaPrin. B 151. 

root. See FaPrin. A 300*. 

roppys, the intestines, Thebes 115. 

rosary, rosebush, Garl. 963. 

rosers, rosebushes or rose-gardens, Garl. 650. 

rosty, to roast, Garl. 1299. 

rote, root, Garl. 1347;—hart rote, heart’s root. 
—to rot, Dance 232. 

rotyd, rooted, rotted? Ship 8495. 

roufe, roof, Hawes 348. 

rounceuall, Roncesvalles, Garl. 495. 

rouncy, Thebes 166*. 

round, around, Orl. xii:13. 

roundel, To Somer 31, FaPrin. A 353, Shirley 
123%: 

Roundels in this volume, pp. 67, 68, 211, 221-23, 
231-32. See Note p. 466. 

rounsis, Garl. 1280*. 

rout, a multitude, Libel 515. 

route, tosnore, Thebes 110;—to assemble, Libel 
222 


routhe, pity, FaPrin. H 7. 

rowghte, rout, Garl. 240. 

rowle, roll, Ecl. 488. 

rowmes, positions, ranks, Ecl. 272, 846, 868, 
1058, 1063; —place, space, Ship 101, Garl. 116, 
256. 


rownyd, whispered, Garl. 250. 
rownyngely, in a whisper, MaReg. 172, Garl. 
250. 


rowthe, rough, Garl. 787. 

royalme, realm, Ship 579, 6942, 6988. 

rub on the gall, Garl. 97*, Cavend. 205*. 

rubarbe, rhubarb, Libel 354. 

rubbe, to rob, Ship 523*. 

rubryke, rubric, Nevill envoy 16*. 

rubyfycate, heated to redness, Prohib. 35. 
Only case NED. 

rudesse, violence, Orl. xviii:19. 

rusty, foul, Thebes 75, Ecl. 425. 

ruthe, a pity, Libel 174. 

ryall, ryally, royal, etc., Hardyng 7, Hawes 
1286, Nevill 162, Garl. 487. 


ryconyng, a reckoning, Cavend. 1235, 1417. 
rygne, to reign, Hardyng 57. 

rympled, wrinkled, Dance 200. 

ryn, to run, Garl. 81, 196. 

ryse, Lickp. 68*. 

ryve, to split, Churl 282. 


s as a verbal ending, Libel 158, 507, 525, Ripley 
74, Prohib. 38, Nevill dial. 99. Nevill FER 12, 
145, 163, Ship 74, 208, 456, 462, 467, 582, 
6958, 8507, 13823, Ecl. ” 474, Garl. 593, 635, 
683, 716, 1211, 1526, Cavend. 40, Morley 135, 
4 


143. 

saby, Sheba, Garl. 669. 

sad, sadness, etc., serious, sobriety, Walton 
A 387, E 67, MaReg. 274, Dial. 558, Epithal. 
85, FaPrin. A7l, C24, G 198, 244, K’S, Pallad. 
42, Nevill envoy 9, Ship 470, 488, 598, 13842, 
Garl. 201, 386, 886, 13915 1526, Cavend. 1360: 
—sad, sadness, Cavend. 725 Morley 65? 

safe, save, except, Dance 293, Reproof 74. See 
sauf. 

Sails, see note LettGlouc. 17. 

salarie, Dance 536. First case NED 1484. 

salfe cundight, safe conduct, Garl. 503. 

sall, salt, Prohib. 29*. See Notes for all the 
terms of this stanza. 

salmes, psalms, Shirley II:28. 

Salomon, Nevill 831. 

salu, see port salu, Garl. 541. 

salusty, Sallust, Garl. 331. 

Samson, Nevill 839, Ecl. 975. 

sandyvere, Prohib. 29*. 

sank royall, Garl. 1430*. 

satirray, Garl. 340*. Not in NED. 

Saturn, Walton E 140, Thebes 3, FaPrin. C 64, 
Hawes 285. 

sauf, save, except, FaPrin. K 14. See safe. 

sauh, saugh, saw, Thebes 172. 

saunce mercy, Nevill 38*. 

sawe, to sow, Ship 13875. 

sawh, saw, Walton, etc. 

sawte, assault, Garl. 1365. 

sawtry, psaltery, a stringed instrument, Lickp. 
92. 


say, saw, Libel 230, Garl. 623. 

scamonye, Libel 352*. 

scape, s. escape, Dance 501. 

scapid, escaped, FaPrin. G 314. 

scarcete, scarcity, FaPrin. D 18, 69. 

schenschipe, destruction, injury, Walton A 65. 

schent, injured, Walton E 86, Prohib. 18. 

schold, schuld, should, Walton passim. 

schrewes, evildoers, Walton A 88. 

science, knowledge, Hawes 56, Ship 145, 243, 
13807, 13836, 13877, Ecl. prol. 60, Ecl. 228, 
653, Cavend. 1133, epitaph 30. 

Scipioun, Scipio, FaPrin. C 10, G 218*. See 
Cipioun. 

scissure, cutting? scissor? Ship 483. 

sclaundre, slander, FaPrin. B 91, 98. 

Scluse, Sluys, Libel 61*. 

scole, school. 

Scottish Poets, see Gen. Introd. p. 24-25. 

scrowe, scroll, Libel. 180. 


AND FINDING LIST 583 


scut, rabbit, Garl. 626. 

se, seen, Pallad. 82*. By error in Orl. ix:2*. 

seche, seek, Dial. 658, Ripley 72, Shirley I1:104, 
Libel 147, 363; —such, Orl. iv A:3. 

sect, Cavend. 1174. 

secundynes, Prohib. 59*. 

see, seat, throne, Dance 14, see 66; FaPrin. A 68, 
118; —sea, Ship 6973. 

seek, seekly, sick, etc., Walton A 350, MaReg. 

be 


seely, silly, simple, LettGlouc. 49. 
seeth, sees, Dance 635; v. imper. see FaPrin. 
HDi 


seie, saw, Walton A 302; —say, Walton A 383. 

seignory, lordship, Ecl. 942. 

sein,to see, seen, FaPrin. D 101, G 33;—to say, 
Orl. xvii:33. 

seist, seest, Churl 326. 

were to seke, were boageduats, Garl. 877. 

seknesse, sickness, Walton A 360 

Te seelde, seldom, Walton A 328, MaReg. 


ie cell, Walton E 165. 

seller, cellar, Ecl. 393. 

Selond, Zeeland, Libel 524. 

seluen, self, Walton A 133. 

seluerene, silver, FaPrin. C 67. 

sely, “poor”, Cavend. 74. 

semachus, Symmachus, Walton A 217; see Fa- 
cine eu lis 

semblabli, similarly, FaPrin. D 127, Ecl. 297. 

semblid, assembled, Orl. xix:10. 

sement, cement, Garl. 306. 

sempte, seemed, FaPrin. A 431, 454. 

sene, senna, Libel 354. 

sene, seen, Hawes 754;—to see, Libel 499, Ecl. 
Ss 

Senek, Seneca, FaPrin. A 253, C 24, K 5*, Ecl. 
1091, Garl. 358. 

senge, to sing, Nevill 195. 

sengle, single, Dance 112. 

sengulerli, particularly, FaPrin. A 447. See 
Praise of Chaucer 1968*. 

sent, scent, Ecl. 114, 122. 

sentence, sense, purport, Walton A 18, 32, E18, 
Churl 2, 302, Thebes 54, FaPrin. A 345, 448, 
Shirley 1:91, Nevill dial. 5, Ecl. 702, Cavend. 
77, ?260; —utterance, opinion, Churl 321, 
Horns 15, Dance 431, FaPrin. K 5, 27; —sub- 
ject, MaReg. 160. 

sentencious, full of meaning, Hawes 1261, 1268. 

senyng, Libel 361*. 

septir, sceptre, Walton A 343. 

seriaunt, sergeant, FaPrin. G 249. 

serious, FaPrin. C 18*. 

Serpent of Division, see p. 177. 

seryously, serially, in sequence, Garl. 581. See 
ceriousli. 

sese, to cause to cease, quench, Walton B 6. 

sesyng, ceasing, Prohib. 104. 

seteys, cities, Mass 162. 

seth, sethen, since, Dance 99, 285, 628. See 
sith. 


seth, v. imper.see, Orl. viii:10; —sees, FaPrin. 
B 122. 


setten by, value, MaReg. 28. See FaPrin. A 184. 

setyn, sat, Mass 174. 

Seueryne, Severinus, a name of Boethius, Fa- 
Prin. H 35. 

Seustis, Pseustis, Ecl. prol. 39*. 

Seven Liberal Arts. See Hawes 249*, 463-526*, 
Garl. 53. 

sewe, to follow, Walton A 260, Dance 198, Fa- 
Prin. A 230, Reproof 40, Ship Gil, Epp Ecl. 
767, Cavend. 1274; to petition, plead legally, 
Reproof 79; Hardyng 56s 

sewr, sure, MaReg. 320. 

sewte, suit, Cavend. 213. 

sexangled, hexagonal, six-cornered, Hawes 306. 

sey, saw, Libel 230. 

seyne, seen, Walton A 25, 318, FaPrin. A 60?, 
Eat3) Burgh 22, Mass 180; —to say, FaPrin. 
B 105, Pallad. 28, Libel 533; —to see, Pallad. 
355 

seyng, seeing, FaPrin. A 165, Ecl. prol. 77. 

shadde, shed, FaPrin. C 77. 

shadow, shadwe, shadow, FaPrin. DIs2y Bel: 
prol. 100*. See under cloked, cloudy. 

shape, to make, Orl. xviii:12. 

shappe, shape, FaPrin. A 11, Orl. xvi:2. 

sharp, rough, rugged, Hawes "45, 

shene, pane shining, Churl 53, 98, Mass 116, 
Morley 3 

shent, misused, Ship 234. 

sheo, "she, Epithal. 80. 

shet, shette, shut, Churl 107, Orl. xxii:6, Pal- 
lad. 100, Ecl. 493, Garl. 598, 1475. 

sheuers, pieces, Fcl. 405. 

Ship on coins, To Somer 17, LettGlouc. 17*. 

shitt, shut, Churl 120, 161, Hawes 1299. 

shope me, set myself, Dial. 802. 

shone, shoes, Ecl. 212. 

shours, rainfalls, onsets, Dance 13. 

shrape, to scrape, Churl 125. 

shrewdly, shroudly, evilly, ill, Garl. 614, 1188. 

a shrige, Ashridge, Garl. 1428, 1432*. 

shul, shall. 

siker, sure, Dial. 723. 

sikerly, surely, Walton A 208, E 99, Libel 154, 
333, 543. 

sikernesse, security, Roundel 2, Dance 628, 
Fpithal. 162, Hawes 439. 

silff, self, FaPrin. A 369, G 301, 317, Orl. xviii: 
125 xxil:11, xxiii:1, 11. 

similitude, fable, Hawes 693, 752. 

simulacioun, imitation, falsity, Dance 172. 

singulere, FaPrin. G 57, 193, Garl. 649. See 
synguleer. 

Sirens, MaReg. 249*, FaPrin. C 93*. 

sit, etc., to be appropriate, MaReg. 329, 407, 
Churl 166, FaPrin. A 431, Orl. xvii:22, xix:21, 
Ecl. prol. 83. See sytte 

sith, sithen, since, Dial. 721, Churl 141, Dance 
225, 278, FaPrin. A 252, 356, B 27, 100, D 114, 
Epithal. 159, 196, Burgh 17, Shirley I1:75, Re- 
proof 24, Libel 144, Orl. xiii:27, Ecl. 230, ete. 
See seth. 


584 SELECT GLOSSARY 


sith go ful yore, many years ago, Bycorne 100. 

ofte sithes, often times, Churl 184, 375, Dance 
177, 508, Epithal. 3. 

sivile, Seville, Libel 54. 

skapethe, escapes, Lickp. 119. 

skene, skein, Garl. 782. 

skie, sky, cloud, FaPrin. G 24*, K 31. 

skile, course of reasoning, MaReg. 299. 

skille, skyll, cause, reason, knowledge, Walton 
E 91, Lickp. 77, Ecl. 737, Garl. 93. 

sklender, slender, Thebes 102. See Morley 230*. 

slacke, slow, Ship 65. 

slaiys, Garl. 775*. 

slake, to abate, cease, Walton A 276, Hawes 47. 

slauth, see sloth. 

slawthfulle, Garl. 120. See sloth. 

sleeth, slen, etc., to slay, MaReg. 19, Dance 
7, FaPrin. B 59. 

sleues, sleeves, Ship 515*. 

slidyng, inconstant, Libel 559. 

slipir, slippery, Roundel 2. 

slipper, slippery, Garl. 501. 

Sloth, Epithal. 141, FaPrin. A 399, 417, Re- 
proof 4*, Orl. vi:11, xv:25, Mass 47 ,91, Hawes 
669, 1313*, Nevill envoy 13, Ecl. prol. 51, Ecl. 
1023, Garl. 120, see 522, Cavend. 24-30*, see 
47. 

slowe, slouh, slew, Walton A 94, 97, 222. 

slowyshe, slow, Nevill 155. 

slyme, Prohib. 58*. 

smaragdis, emeralds, Garl. 480. 

smertly, briskly, Walton A 381. 

smet, smote, FaPrin. G 320, see 301. 

smethys, smiths, Prohib. 38. 

smook, smoke, Walton A 327. 

smored, smothered, Hardyng 111. 

smyten, struck, fought, Hardyng 107, 115. 

smyten of, smite off, FaPrin. G 301. 

of smytys, smite off, Prohib. 38. 

snayle, snail, Prohib. 53*. 

snite, snipe, a game-bird, Churl 360, Ecl. 682. 

snurt, to snort, Garl. 1437. 

soche, such. 

Socrates, Ship 481. 

soden, sudden, FaPrin. E 83, etc. 

soiour, sojourn, stay, Dance 378. 

solace, pleasure, Garl. 1365. 

solacious, pleasurable, Hawes 10, 355, 1307, 
Garl. 677. 

solas, delight, Garl. 649. 

solein, an independent role, “lone hand”, Dial. 

42 


solempnysed, Shirley I1:32*. 

solisgise, Hawes 737*. 

Somer, Hoccleve to, p. 66. 

all and somme, general and particular, Pro- 
hib. 98. 

sonde, message, visitation, Dial. 522. 

sondri, sundry, FaPrin. G 95, etc. 

sone, soon, Dance 592, etc. 

songe, sung, FaPrin. G 62, K 20. 

sonnest, soonest, Dance 240. 

sonnyssh, sunny, sunlike, Churl 59, 250. 

sool, alone, Dance 110. 


soor, sore, Epithal. 39. 

soore, sorely, Walton C 6. 

soote, sweet, FaPrin.G 175, 184; —s. sweat, 
FaPrin. D 105, Mass 156, 175. 

sope, soap. Dial. 826*, Libel 55. 

sorous, sorrows, Orl. ix:18. 

sort, manner, Cavend. 1360; —condition, Nevill 
67;—class, kind, Ship 43, Garl. 512;—to be 
classed, Garl. 1253. 

sorte, number, Ecl. 139. 

soso, after a fashion, Pallad. 109. 

sorw, sorweful, sorrow, etc., Dance 151, Fa- 
Prin. B 65, etc. 

sotelte, subtlety, Reproof 44, Libel 403. 

soth, true, FaPrin. E 40. 

sotill, subtle, able, Walton E 141. 

souffren, to suffer, permit, Roundel 1. 

souhte, sought. 

soul, alone, Thebes 97. 

soundeth, sounds, Ship 3;—to make sounds, 
Ecl. 414, 415;—to promote, tend to, Ecl. 633, 
741. See sownd. 

soupe, to sup, Thebes 98. 

sovl, alone, Orl. xiii:29, xvii:4. 

south, i.e., souht, sought, FaPrin. A 300. 

sow, sew, Garl. 773. 

sowde, south, Lickp. 29. 

sowketh, sucketh, FaPrin. B 63, Libel 389, 390. 

sowle, Prohib. 41*. 

sownde, sowne, to tend toward, Dial. 758, Cay- 
end. 32; —to sound, Walton D 27; to be of a 
certain tenor, Nevill 192; —s. report, noise 
Libel 173. See soundeth. 

sowponaile, aid, Dance 663. See suppowel- 
ment, Hardyng 12*. 

spar, to fasten, Garl. 1402. 

sparcles, scattered particles, Ship 13875*, Ecl. 
1027. 

spare, to spar, prop up? FaPrin. A 88. Not in 
NED in such sense, nor in Bergen. 

in special, in detail, Dial. 582. 

spectacles, FaPrin. D 20*, Lickp. 54*, Garl. 
1075. 

speculatif, theory, Dance 427*. 

spede, to prosper, Mass 96, Lickp. 8 and pas- 
sim, Hardyng 98, Libel 199, 479, Ripley 189, 
Nevill 94. 

spedfull, helpful, Libel 355. 

speere, speare, sphere, Walton E 132, etc., Fa- 
Prin. C 82, Hawes 2, 222, 1401, 4440, etc., 
Garl. 688, Cavend. 107. 

spendell, spindle, Cavend. 1284. 

sperycall, spherical, Garl. 1479. 

spill, to come to grief, Ecl. 74. 

spryngyng, a rising, Orl. xvii: 3. 

spyne, thorn, FaPrin. C 83. 

stace, Stacius, Statius, Burgh 21, Garl. 337. 

stal, stole, FaPrin. D 65. 

stall, seat of honor, Hardyng 125. 

Stanza-liaison, Mass 74-97*. See Pallad. prol. 
For simple enjambement, see Hawes dedic. 
28-29*. 

staple, staple fayre, a market, exchange, Libel 
60, etc. See introd. to Libel. 


AND FINDING LIST 585 


stars, see sun. 

state, class, rank, Dance 634, Nevill dial. 37, 
Ship 533, 578, 8513; —man of rank, Ship 8507, 
8509, Ecl. 602. See estate. 

stede, place, Garl. 1318. 

stellify, to raise to the stars, i.e., to extol, Garl. 
947*. 


stepmodir, stepmother, see FaPrin. D 30*. 

sterismon, steersman, Pallad. 11. 

sterne, star? Pallad. 11; —rudder? idid., 53. 

sterre, etc., star, Walton E 136, etc. 

sterue, to die, Reproof 13, Mass 93, Libel 125. 

steryng, urging, Dance 26*. 

stieng, ascending, Walton E 128. 

stigiall, of Styx, Garl. 1300. 

stiketh by, is close at hand, Dial. 775. 

stile, a pen, Dance 40, FaPrin. A 449, D 61, 
G 5, K 17?;—title, appellation, Dial. 579; — 
style, Nevill envoy 12*, Ecl. 181, 632, 654, 
Cavend. 1367. See style. 

stired, incited, MaReg. 192. See steryng. 

stockes, trunks, Hawes 4224. 

stole, stool, Garl. 774, see note 771. 

stood at, i.e., were in, FaPrin. G 191. 

stood a bak, "lacked success, FaPrin. D 56. 

stound, time, Walton A 384, Orl. xii:3, Hard- 
yng 123. 

stoupe, to stoop, FaPrin. K 2. 

Stow, see p. 193. 

stowte, stout, Garl. 1474. 

Strabo, Ship 6985*. 

strake, struck, Hawes 4331, Garl. 1347, Cav- 
end. 216, 261. 

straunge, etc., disdainful, Dance 187, 299, 454, 
see Dance 505 

made it straunge, was aloof, refused, Orl. xiii: 
5*, Libel 405*, Garl. 444. 

straunge, s. foreigners, Pallad. 31. 

strawed, strewn, Churl 180. 

strayt, immediately, Cavend. 143. 

strecche, to suffice, Libel 517. 

streit, strict, Churl 108. 

strenges, strings, Walton D 26. 

strengthist, strengthenest, Orl. xvii:8. 

strett, street, Cavend. 136. 

stroke, struck, Nevill 35. 

Stroode, FaPrin. K 25. 

strook, s. stroke, Dance 183. 

stye, to ascend, Walton E 53. 

style, title of rank, Hardyng 50;—pen or liter- 
ary style, FaPrin. G °; Nevill dial. 21, envoy 
125Eclt 654, Ecl. prol. 3, 10, 28, 30, 36, Cavend. 
63*, 76; see "stile. 

stynt, ended, Epithal. 42;’'—to end, Pallad. 46. 

subgytz, subjects, Hardyng 7. 

sue, see sewe. 

suerte, security, firm bond, Libel 232. 

sufferayn, sovereign, Walton A 68, Garl. 523. 

sufficistent, sufficient, Ecl. 311. Not in NED. 

sugratyfe, sugared, Hawes 663. See sugre. 

sugre, sugrid, etc., sugar, Churl 73, Thebes 52*, 
Pe A 243*, 461, K 16, Shirley 1E:25; Garl. 

3-4* 

sum, a person, somebody, Walton A 27, Garl. 

My Gxes 


Sun passing the stars. See FaPrin. G 36*, K 29- 
30*, Hawes 222-24.—Not affected by clouds, 
FaPrin. G 24-26. 

superate, conquered, Ecl. 916*. 

superflu, superfluous, Ecl. prol. 13, 63, Garl.32. 

Superlative, the use ok double, FaPrin, C 19, 50, 
Ecl. 867. See note Walton B 28. 

suppleyd, supplicated, Garl. 49, 1443. 

supportacion, support, Shirley "11:73. 

suppowelment, aid, Hardyng 12*. 
ponaile. 

supprisid, overcome, FaPrin. G 22*, Garl. 537. 

surfullinge, embroidering, Garl. 787. 

surmountynge, excelling, Garl. 885. 

surpluage, SUC PEAae, remainder, rest, Dance 
36, FaPrin. D 120, G 166. 

surquedie, pride, FaPrin. A 176. 

surquidous, haughty, Dance 372, FaPrin. C 54. 

Surrey. See p. 376 and note; Countess of Surrey, 
Garl. 753*. 

suSpyres, sighs, Morley 1. 

sustren, sustres, sisters, Epithal. 182, FaPrin. 
A 242, D 12, Burgh 7. 

suwe, to follow, pursue, Shirley 1:72. See sewe. 

suyng, the pleading of a suit, Garl. 253. 

Swage, to assuage, reduce, Ship mS. 

swarte, black, Garl. 1366. 

sweuene, dream, Orl. xvii:3. 

Sword, the named, Hawes 4319*. 

SWOWN, swoon, FaPrin, Bale 

Swyn, Libel 62*, 

sy, saw, Dial. 821. 

syche, such. 

at a syde, at close? Nevill 49*. 

sydony, Sidon, Garl. 552. 

Sygismounde, Sigismund, Hardyng 121*, Libel 


See sow- 


ee sighs, FaPrin. B 65. 

sykernesse, sykyrnenes, security, FaPrin. B 8, 
Orl. ix:20. 

sylff, self, FaPrin. B 151, see 154. 

sylt, soil deposited by water, sand, Garl. 23. 

Symak, Symmachus, FaPrin. H1*. See Sem- 
achus. 

symplesse, simplicity, Shirley I:11, Mass 18. 

symulacon, simulation, Mass 149. 

symulacres, images, FaPrin. C 100. 

syn, since, MaReg. 383, Roundel 2, Orl.xiii:18, 
xv:5, xvil:18, xxi: 

Synderesis, FaPrin. C 96*. 

syngler, especial, FaPrin. A 409, Garl. 524, 711. 

synguleer, single, Praise of Chaucer 1968*. 
See FaPrin. A 409, G 57, 193. 

syth, sythen, since, Orl. 1x:5, 12, 19, Mass 52, 
Nevill 123, 136, 168, ae Ripley 59, Hawes 
1322, etc. See sith, seth 

sythe, times, Mass 123, 177. See sithes. 

sytte, to be fitting, Hardyng 19, Garl. 149, see 
note on 77. See sit. 


ta, to have. 

taberdes, sleeveless surcoats, Gari. 395. 

tabide, to abide, FaPrin. H 28, Mass 152. 

tables, backgammon, Nevill dial. 47; tablets, 
Mass 165. 


586 SELECT GLOSSARY 


tacounte, to account, Pallad. 104, 

Tagus, the river, Burgh Se 

taill, payment, due, To Somer 20. 

take, to put, Prohib. 52;—given, FaPrin. B 144; 
pleased, enthralled, Walton D 39. 

take on hond, to undertake, LettGlouc. 21, 
Libel 12, 66, 239, 269, Nevill 91. 

taken, considered, Ship 39. 

Talbot, Ecl. 855. 

talecte, to allure, Nevill 7. See allectyng. 

talent, desire, Walton B 6. 

talis, tales, Churl 366. 

talkyng, Churl 142, Hawes 4406*. 

talle, tale, Shirley 11:104. 

tame, to open, set abroach, FaPrin. D 19*. See 
attame. 

tane, taken, Orl. xvi:6, xvii:23, xviii;20, Hawes 
4440, 

tansey, Thebes 101*. 

Tapestry. See Cavend. 120-21*. 

Tapestry Verses. See p. 114. 

tappettis, figured cloths used as hangings,Garl. 
474, 771. 

tapplien, to apply, FaPrin. A 297. 

tarage, Churl 13, 350*. 

taraye, to array, Churl 47. 

targe, shield, coat of arms, Ship 128. 

tartour, tartar, Prohib. 5. 

tath, taketh, Orl. xii:22, 28. 

tathenis, to Athens, FaPrin. G 149, 

tatteyn, to attain, Pallad. 22 

tauellis, Garl. 775*. 

tauenture, to venture, Ecl. prol. 18. 

taumpinnis, Garl. 636* 

taunt, to answer back, retort, Garl. 100. 

tawoiden, to avoid, to banish, FaPrin. A 277. 
See avoyd. 

tayle, tail, rear, Hardyng 66. 

in tayle, entailed, Hardyng 55. 

tayneth, kindles, Ripley 173. 

Tedeus, Tydeus, Epithal. 138*. 

tedious, Hawes 210*. 

teene, anguish, Bycorne 81. 

teermes, terms, Thebes 30. 

teint, tainted, Dance 472, 487. 

Temple of Glass. See Hawes 1309. 

tenbrace, to embrace, Epithal. 14, Nevill dial. 
5 


tencrese, to increase, FaPrin. C 47. 

tende, to attend, Ship 7018. 

tendure, to endure, Epithal. 7, 161, Pallad. 2. 

tenebrus, dark, Hawes 301. 

tenlumyne, to illumine, FaPrin. C 13, K 13. 

tent, heed, Ripley 79. 

Teocrite, Theocritus, Ecl. prol. 19. See Garl. 
327. 

Terence, Burgh 19, Garl. 353. 

termes, terms, FaPrin. G 17*. See teermes. 

termyne, to determine, describe, Epithal. 69. 

tessiphone, Tisiphone, one of the Furies, Wal- 
ton A 60*. 

Testalis, Thestylis, Ecl. 690*. See Garl. 675. 

texcluden, to exclude, Epithal. 61. 

texecut, to execute, Epithal. 188. 


texemplyfye, to exemplify, Horns 23*. 

texpresse, to express, Pallad. 117. 

ateynte, attained, Lick 

—th, verbal plural, Walton’ A 105", 2535 254. 
C 25, D 42, E 100, Epithal. 78, FaPrin. D 25, 
28, Hawes 206, etc., Nevill 24, Libel 50, 51, 
510, Ripley 2 , 116, Prohib. 68, Ship ie 25, 58, 
115, 206, 531, 553, 6997, 7001, 8468, 8490, 
13857, Ecl. prol. 5, 44, 106, 110, Ecl. 290, 425, 
502, 529, 544, 591, 626, 633, 635, 672, 707, 845, 
897, 905 ,1034, Garl. 696, Cavend. 42, 43, 217, 
219, 1174, 1261*, 1328. 

ae rime on verb-ending. See Hawes, stanza 


105. 

thabbey, the abbey, Burgh 43. 

thactyfnes, the activity, Nevill 163. 

Thais, Ecl. 686, 689. 

thallpies, the Alps, FaPrin. E 66. 

thamaris, Tomyris, Garl. 841*. See Ecl.1112. 

than, then, FaPrin. G 283, Hardyng 1, etc., 
Cavend. 38, 144. 

thanke, thanks, credit, MaReg. 349, Dial. 587, 
Shirley I:16, 20. 

thar, their, Hardyng 11; —there, Hardyng 54, 
96, 119. 

tharte, the art, Nevill dial. 12. 

thassaut, the ‘assault, Epithal. 163, FaPrin. 
A 236. 

thastlabre, the Astrolabe, FaPrin. A 295*. 

thauctour, the author, Shirley 1:93, etc. 

thawaityng, the lying in wait, FaPrin. A 63. 

eee them, Reproof 55, Orl. ix:3, Hardyng 
133 


the, pron. thee, Dial. 684, 688, etc., Churl 300, 
etc., FaPrin. B 76, 113, Can "118, Orl. ii: 10, ix: 
11, 15, 16, 22, 26, xiii:16, Lickp. 117, Prohib. 
5, Nevill envoy 10, Ship 7003, 13820, Garl. 
612, 613, Cavend. 85, 255, etc. 

theatryne, dramatist, Burgh 19*. 

theder, thither, Walton E 48, Libel 197, 517, 
544, 547, Garl. 287. 

thee, ‘the, to prosper, Libel 41, 97, 477, 518, 
Ship 460. 

theere, the year, FaPrin. A 5. 

Pees, these. 

theffecte, the effect, the purpose, Nevill 2, Cav- 
end. 79. 

theih, though, FaPrin. A 229. 

thekt, thatched, Ship 8457. 

thellynge, telling, Nevill 426. 

Pempire, the empire, FaPrin. C 16. 

then, than, Churl 59, 98, 259, Pallad. 20, C 1, 
Orl. xxi:l, Hawes 261, 338, 4377, Ecl. 70, 123, 
555, 729, 740, 777, 976; —thence, Walton 
A 215. 

thend, the end, Cavend. 1187. 

thenk, think, Walton E 49, Orl. xxi:6. 

thenlumynyd, the illumined, Burgh 26. 

Pensaumple, the example, Dance 19. 

thensugerd, the sugared, Garl. 73*. 

thentent, the intent, purpose, Nevill 115, Ship 
134. 

Theocritus, Garl. 327. See Teocrite. 


AND FINDING LIST 587 


theoric, the theoretical aspect of a science or 
art, Pallad. 77, Ripley 187; see notes Dance 
427, Walton A 332. 

Peos, She Shirley 1:93. 

ther, their, FaPrin. A 244, G 128, 129, 130, etc., 
Orl. xix:9. See Garl. 394, 442, 526, Giles 1441, 
1537. 

Perfro, from there, Dance 582. 

PerPe, the earth, Walton C 5. 
erwt, therewith. 

Peternal, the eternal, Epithal. 27. 

thexperience, the experience, FaPrin. E 9. 

thewes, habits, virtues, Walton A 86, Orl.xvi:5. 

thider, thither. 

thikke, numerous, thick, MaReg. 146; —ado. 
Lickp. 22 

thilke, those, Walton D 36, Churl 291. 

thin, meagre, Ecl. 214. See thyn. 

Pinward, the inward, Epithal. 30. 

“This is to say”. See note on FaPrin. D 8. 

Po, thoo, those, Walton A 46, 49, 174, C 25, 
E 100, MaReg. 225, FaPrin. A 150: F 6, K 8, 
Pallad. 108, Epithal. 335 Orl: ix:5, "Libel 518; 
—then, Walton A IDSs B LOD) 45, FaPrin. 
G 249, Lickp. 25, Orl. xix:17. 

thobeisaunce, the Obeisance, obedience, Fa 
Prin. E 12. 

thoder, the other, Nevill 34, 40, 41, 42, 44. 

thof, though, Orl. ii:11; see note Orl. xix. 

Tholomeus, Ptolemy, Ship 133*, 6997*. 

Thomyris, Ecl. 1112*. See Thamaris. 

thone, the one, Nevill 40, 41, 42, 43. 

Pordeynaunce, the ordinance, Epithal. 22. 

Pordre, the order, Epithal. 28. 

thordris nyne, the nine orders. See FaPrin. 
C 69 note. 

thorug, through, Dial. 588. 

thoruh, through, FaPrin. E 57, etc. 

thoruhgirt, pierced, paras BiSie 

thousch, though, Orl. v:8 

thowthe, though, Garl. 725, 740, 938, 1016. 

in a thowght, in a trice, Garl. 1078. 

thrast, thrust, Lickp. 9. 

threde, third, Churl 211, 330. 

thret, threatened, Garl. 95. 

thridde, third, FaPrin. G Bee 

thries, thrice, FaPrin. D1 

thrift, prosperity, Libel 115, 389, Prohib. 27. 

a s. and »., thirst, Walton D 47, MaReg. 


thristy, thirsty, MaReg. 135. 

throme, thrum, Cavend. 1283*. 

Jack a’ Thrum’s bible. See note Garl. 209. 

throwe, time, Dial. 649; —through, Garl. 1351 

thrust, thirst, Dance 396, FaPrin. D 4, Mass 
159, 

thrysse, Eth Prohib. 18. 

ce through, Lickp. 82. 

pt, that. 

thu, thou, LettGlouc. 49. 

thupholder, the upholder, Nevill 131. 

thuntrust, the untrust, instability, FaPrin. A 
429 

thurgh, through. 


thwartyd, disputed, Garl. 1017. 

thycke, numerous, Ship 59. 

thye, Walton A 31. See noght for thye. 

thylke, FaPrin. B 69. See thilke. 

thymage, the image, FaPrin. C 34. 

thyn, Ship 13827. See thin. 

thyng, thinketh, Orl. ix:8. 

Pynke, see bePpynke. 

til, to, Epithal. 48. 

tilthe, cultivation, Churl 355. 

unto time, until, Churl 305. 

timorous, Garl. 260*. 

tirikkis, tricks? Garl. 1482. First case NED 
1548. 

tisyk, phthisis, LettGlouc. 53*. 

Titchbourne, poem by, see note Dance 589. 

titiuyllis, Garl. 636*. 

titled, listed by title, Shirley II:5. 

Tityrus, i.e., Virgil, Ecl. 411. 
to, till, Orl. xii: 24, xvili:23, Nevill 128, 138, 
139; —too, Walton "A 268, MaReg. 362, Churl 
209, 325, Dance 248, 606, FaPrin. B 57, E 40, 
G 1G Shirley II:11, Nevill 157, Ship 153, 194, 
244, 509, Ecl. 275, 784, PIS25 Garl. 204, 248° 
249, 748, 1360, Cavend. 178, 1366: ;—two, Pa. 
Prin. E 69, H tf. Sze too. 

to for, before, Dance 31, 472, 488, FaPrin. E 30, 
G 259, Mass 2, Orl. xviii: 13, xx1:9, 

toforn, before, Churl 252, Thebes 76, Dance 51, 
etc. 

togedir, together, Libel 109, Garl. 286, 393. 

togidre, together, Walton E 155 FaPrin, E 81, 
Nevill 103. 

toiaggid, torn to pieces, Garl. 623. 

toke, gave, FaPrin. E 45, Libel 180; —obtained, 
Hardyng 63. 

toke on him, undertook, FaPrin. G 321*. 

toke him to, Hardyng 61*. 

tolde, accounted, Walton A 300. 

Tomyris, see Thamaris, Thomyris. 

tone, the one, FaPrin. D 38, Morley 5, 161, 191. 

Tongilius, FaPrin. E 43*, 

tonne, tun, LettGlouc. 51*. 

too, two, FaPrin. AV2595 GiS33 133, 1595 EL 18: 
Sil Prohib. 90935 

tookene)e, betokens, Epithal. 107. 

toome, empty, Walton A 269. 

ens. fone sapphire, or precious stone, 
Churl 250 

torqwat, ie Boethius, Burgh 16*. 

Toscane, Tuscany, Morley 77. 

tosed, carded or combed, Libel 100. 

tossyng on my brayne, turning over in my 
mind, Hawes 267. 

tothir, the other, FaPrin. H 21, Morley 5, 159, 
161, 163, 192, 203. 

touchyng, concerning, FaPrin. H 32, Mass 17. 

toumbed, entombed, Hardyng 41. 

tow, to? Orl. v:2;—two, Libel 20;—*to.....ward, 
see ward. 

towche of, mention, MaReg. 320. 

towchis, devices, tricks, Garl. 748. 

towchyd, portrayed, expressed, formed, Garl. 
143, 592, 1139. 


588 SELECT GLOSSARY 


trace, footing, step, moving procession, Dance 
198*, Hawes dedic. 47, Hawes 1259, 1339, Cav- 
end. 242;—to follow, Dance 46, 70, Pallad. D 3. 

trace, Thrace, Garl. 493. 

tragedy, FaPrin. K 35, Orl. xv:8, Hawes 1270, 
Cavend. 50. 

Traian, Trajan, FaPrin. 1@06) 

Translation, theory of, Walton A 19*. 

trasid, ornamented with tracery, Garl. 395. 

trauayle, travel, Hawes 57, Ecl. 526; —1labor, 
Fel. 952, Cavend. 1148. 

travelled, travailed, worked, Cavend. 207,1141; 
—travelled, Cavend. 215. 

trayne, deception, Cavend. 87. 

treacle, Churl 182*. 

treate, to entreat, Ecl. 1003. 

tregetour, Dance 513*. 

tresor, Pallad. 86*. 

treste, trust, Pallad. 49, 116, B 2. 

tretable, docile, Ecl. 1013. 

tretour, traitor, FaPrin. F 18, G 127, 316. 

Trevisa. See Gen. Introd. p. 15, Shirley I 40. 

trie, to test, Pallad. 85. 

trifles, Libel 341, Hawes 1336. 

trine, threefold, Pallad. 9. 

trions, Garl. 693*. First case NED of 1594. 

tristesse, sorrow, Dance 131. 

triuiall, Ecl. 695*, 

Triumph, FaPrin. A 366, C 16*, E 19, 73. 

Troilus, Epithal. 136, Mass 181, Hawes 1275, 
4426. See FaPrin. A 287*, Garl. 857. 

trone, throne, seat, Ship 8453, 8461, 8474. 

Trophe, FaPrin. A 284*. 

troth, truth, Nevill 73. 

trow, believe, Walton C 21, Garl. 729, etc. 

trowbely, troubled, Orl. xiv: 23 

trowghte, troth, Burgh 41, 

Troy Book. See "Hawes 1304. 

trumpet, trumpeter, Garl. 235, 243. 

truse, trusse, truce, Libel 26, 128, 199; 225. 

truwe, true, Shirley 1:56, etc. 

tryce, to drag away, MaReg. 287. 

trwly, truly, Walton A 105. 

trynhede, Trinity, Ripley 3. 

tryst, trust, Reproof 52. 

trysteth, plu. imper. trust, Reproof 62. See 
treste. 

Trystram, Tristan, Mass 184. 

Tullius, i.e., Cicero, Praise of Chaucer 2085, 
Epithal. 151, FaPrin. VDSS S67, C22» G pas. 
sim, Burgh 13) Hawes 1105, Nevill 838, Ecl. 
1091, Garl. 330, see 1163. Tragedy of Tullius, 
FaPrin. G. 

tuly, dull red, Garl. 782*. 

tunnys, tuns, FaPrin. D 19*. 

turbit, Libel 353*. 

turkis, turquoises, Garl. 466. 

turvys, turfs, Churl 51 (variant). 

Tuskan, Tuscany, FaPrin. G 59, 65, 91. 

twein, twain, FaPrin. B 56,G 156, ete. 

twen, between, Horns 5, FaPrin. A 264, D 50, 
G 268 


Twishe, Tush! Garl. 208. 
twiys, twice, Garl. 7 


Two Ways, Hawes 27*, Nevill 191*, 214*. 

twound, twined, Cavend. 1291. 

twyes, twice, Libel 136. See twiys. 

twylight, Hawes 272*, 

twynd, twined, Cavend. 1307. 

twyne, to separate, MaReg. 17, 42, 318, Prohib. 
20, Cavend. 1305; —to wind, turn (a song), 
Dance 260. 

by twyne, between, Walton A 333. 

twynklyng, tinkling, Garl. 681. 

twysse, twice, Prohib. 18, Garl. 444. 

tyde, time, Hardyng 60. 

tyll, to, Epithal. 197, Hardyng 27, Cavend. 269. 

tyne, interval, Garl. 505. 

tyred, tore, Walton D 50552; 

tyryen, Tyrian, Walton B 10. 

tyssue, tissue, Hawes 113. 

tything, tidings, Churl 198, 202, Orl. 11:4. 


Vado Mori text, p. 128. 

vailith, to avail, Dance 132, 280, Hawes 1320, 
Cavend. 145. 

Valence, Valenciennes, Horns 21. 

Valerian, Fcl. 1105. 

Valerius Maximus, Garl. 381*. 

valour, valure, worth, Ship 486, Ecl. 357, 969, 
Morley 27. 

Varro, Morley 246. 

vauntage, advantage, Hawes 4333. 

vauntwarde, vanguard, Shirley 1:52. First case 
NED 1476; but see FaPrin. ix:1904. 

vawte, vaulting, inner roof, Garl. 476. 

vaylled, availed, Cavend. 145. 

vaynefull, trivial, Hawes 1334. 

Ubi Sunt motif, Walton C 13*, FaPrin. C introd., 
Nevill 830 ff 

vche, each, Pallad. 39, 88, 100. 

uende, Orl. vi:8*, 

vengoures, avengers, Walton D 41. 

venim, etc., venom, Walton A 354, C 10, Hard- 
yng 17, Hawes 4358. 

ventre, to venture, Ecl. prol. 30. 

venyger, vinegar, Prohib. 46. 

verlet, varlet, Hawes 4254. 

vermylon, vermilion, Prohib. 6*. 

verray, etc., very. 

vertute, virtue, Nevill 214. 

vestigate, to investigate, Cavend. 21. 

vew, s. survey, Garl. 237. 

viagis, journeys, FaPrin. D 92, 102. 

Vincencius, Vincent of Beauvais, FaPrin. G 
215, Garl. 382*. 

vinolent, wine-bibbing, Ecl. 787. 

Virgil, Praise of Chaucer 2089, FaPrin. C 29*, 
K 15, Burgh 15, Hawes 1105, Ship 13867,Ecl. 
prol. 27, Garl. 339, 380-4*. See Maro. 

virrelaies, virelays, FaPrin. A 353*. 

Vican, Vulcanus, a volcano, Walton A 233*. 

Vlysses, Nevill 425, 833. 

vmber, shadow, Cavend. 2. 

vmblis, entrails, Garl. 1213. 

vmple, Lickp. 76*. 

unconnyngly, ignorantly, Bedford 12. 


AND FINDING LIST 589 


yncouth, strange, Churl 74, Thebes 51, Dance 
220, FaPrin. D 117, Nevill dial. 10. 

unctuus, unctuous, oily, Ripley 121. 

vneul, uncle, Pallad. 70. 

vndeiect, not cast out, Nevill envoy 21. 

yndirfong, to undertake, FaPrin. A 48, D 93, 
Mass 153. 

ynkonning, ignorance, FaPrin. D 25, Mass 19. 

vnkouthe, unusual, Shirley 11:26. See ‘yncouth. 

ynlust, distaste, lack of sete: Dial. 537. 

vnlusti, unhappy, Burgh 49 

vnmete, insufficient, Walton A 39, E 17. 

yvnneth, scarcely, with difficulty, MaReg. 216, 
365, 400, Roundel 3, Pallad. 101, Prohib. 77, 
Hawes 4340. 

ynponysched, unpunished, Walton E 81. 

ynrecuperable, not to be recovered from, Fa- 
Prin. B 68. 

vnselPe, misery, Walton A 251. 

vnshred? Garl. 1372. 

vnsmyten, unsmitten, Hardyng 110. 

vnto, until, Walton D 58. 

unto, read undo? Pallad. 52*; or, until? 

vntretable, intractable, FaPrin. B 24. 

yntwynde, broken apart, Garl. 1412. 

vnweldynes, Orl. xv:14*. 

unwarly, unawares, Walton A 265. 

vnwyttyly, ignorantly, Walton C 1. 

voluell, a device of graduated circles, used to 
ascertain the rising and setting of the moon, 
etc., Garl. 1432. 

vowche saue, vouchsafe, Garl. 809. 

vowe, Cavend. 1188*, Ecl. 438, 726. See note 
Bycorne 115. 

voyd, etc., to avoid, Ecl. 88;—to be gone, Ma- 
Reg. 280, Cavend. 219;—to expel, get rid of, 
Thebes 55, Epithal. 24, Libel 358. 

vp so don, upside down, FaPrin. B 89, Lett- 
Glouc. 13. 

vpfynde, to find out, Pallad. 85. 

vpholde, to maintain, Ecl. 538. 

vplandisshe, rustic, countrified, Shirley I1:14. 

vprightes, Roundel 3*. 

vre, s. practice, Hawes 754, Cavend. 28; —for- 
tune, lot, Reproof 34; —ore? Nevill 133*. 

vrsa, the Bear, Garl. 690. 

vrynes, urines, Dance 417*, Prohib. 36. 

vsage, habit, Walton A 363. 

vse, to be accustomed, FaPrin. D 92. 

vste, burnt, Prohib. 37*. Lat. ustum. 

usurpyng, claiming, FaPrin. C 16*. See Cav- 
end. 90. 

Usury, Dance 393 ff.*, Libel 425, Ship 8465. 

vthers, udders, Ecl. 225. 

vtter, to pass current, to sell, Libel 398. 

vtteraunce, sale, Nevill dial. 44;—‘‘outrance”’, 
Hawes 178. 

vtterly, at all, Walton D 21; —completely, Ship 
35, 203, 534, 13859. 

vulgar, vulgar tongue, FaPrin. A 286, 317. 

vyage, journey, Mass 153, Hawes 265. 

vyces, Hawes 367*. 

vyrent, fllourishing, blooming, Nevill dial. 8. 


waad, wad, woad, Libel 326, 521. 

waad ‘aschen, wood ashes, Libel 3277. 

wacche, watch, wakefulness, Dance 346. 

wach, wakefulness, i i.e., late hours, MaReg. 322. 

wade, to proceed "heavily, Hawes 4431*, Ecl. 
793, Cavend. 1219. 

wadmole, a coarse woollen cloth, Libel 56. 

wafres, cakes, MaReg 146. 

wagge, Lickp. 114*, 

waiys, ways, Garl. 181. 

wake, weak, Nevill 212. 

wake or winke, Dance 643*. 

Waking, devices for, Hawes 93 note. See note 
Cavend. 1222. 

wan, 0. got, i.e., arrived, Hardyng 119;—won, 
FaPrin. A 366, Prohib. 61, Garl. 1272, 1364; 
a. wan, Garl. 1366. 

wanhope, despair, FaPrin. B 11. 

wanne, won, Hardyng 79, Hawes 175,192. 

war, ware, wary, cautious, Thebes 143, Dance 
606. 

war, ware, were, Burgh 54, Reproof 16, Cavend. 
80, 110, 135, 155, 1164, 1172, 1220, 1236, 1268, 
1343, 1369, 1377; —wore, Garl. 1084, 1085. 

warbeled, whirling? Cavend. 1284. 

to....ward, FaPrin. B 130*, Lickp. 3. 

wardens, a kind of pears, Ecl. 404. 

warie, to curse, MaReg 63. 

Warwick, see note Shirley 1:87. 

wastelbrede, bread of fine flour, Churl 122. 

wate, s. wait, Nevill 206. 

waue, flicker, MaReg. 399. 

wawes, waves, Nevill 151. 

waytie, weighty, Cavend. 82. 

wax, v. became, Walton A 299. 

waytie, weighty, Cavend. 82. 

wealthe, weal, Hawes 182, 196, Ecl. 1084. See 
welthe. 

wedde, pledge, Hardyng 97. 

wedder, weather, Garl. 12, 1409. 

wedir, wether, Dance 490, FaPrin. G 328, Mass 
106. 

weel willy, favorable, Epithal. 186. 

weengis, wings, FaPrin. A 436. 

wehout, without, Orl. ix:10 (scribal error). 

weie, to weigh, Dial. 600 

weies, ways, FaPrin. G 96. 

welaway, Well away! Orl. xiii:18, xv:17, xvi:6, 
xvili:25. 

welbesayne. See besein. 

wele, well, Orl. xix:25;—weal, Orl. ix:4, Cav- 
end. 1144, 1164. 

weleful, fullof weal, MaReg. 402, FaPrin. A259. 

welere, Ecl. 137*. 

welny, well nigh, Garl. 430. 

welthe, weal, fortune, Walton A 156, 249, 291, 
E 109, MaReg. 6, Garl. 14, 705, 979, Cavend. 
1411. 

wende, to turn, go, Walton A 214, Dial. 790, 
FaPrin. F 13. See wene, pret. 

wendome, Vendome, Hardyng 87*. 

wene, wende, etc., to deem, think, Walton C 
33, Dial. 521, 784, Dance 552, 595, FaPrin, 
E 62) Pallad. C 1, Lickp. 188, Libel 197, Pro- 
hib. 10, 51, 63, Hawes 4293, 


590 SELECT GLOSSARY 


were, to wear, FaPrin. B 137, Orl. xvii:28, Garl. 
68, 322. 

were, s. doubt, difficulty, FaPrin. D 36 (here 
Bergen’s text reads werre). See Orl. xiii:3; 
—wire, Churl 59. 

wern, were, FaPrin. A 153, E 3, F 16, G 107; — 
to refuse, Walton A 279, MaReg. 430, 442. 

wern, were, FaPrin. E 3, F 16, G 107;—to re- 
fuse, Walton A 279, MaReg. 430, 442. 

werrai, very, FaPrin. A 216. 

werre, to make war, Libel 19;—s. war, Dial. 
818, Epithal. 125; —worse, Dial. 819. 

werreie, to attack, make war, MaReg. 117, Fa- 
Prin. G 270. 

werry, Orl. xiii:28*. 

werryng, war, Libel 143. 

wete, to know, Libel 52, 458, 540. 

wetewolddis, cuckolds by consent, Garl. 187. 

weth, with, Orl. 1ii1:6, Garl. 273 

wexe, grown, Bycorne 104;—s. wax, Libel 55, 
132 


wey, to weigh, Bedford 23, FaPrin. E 81. 

weyke, weak, Nevill 29. 

weylleway, FaPrin. B45. See welaway. 

wham, whom, FaPrin. G 41. 

whar, where, Hardyng 62, se 73, 110. 

whas, whose, Epithal. 69, 

what, as interjection, MaRew. 38, Dial. 616, 
Orl. xii:31, Ecl. 67, 1145. 

what, why, Dance 097, Hawes 4431, Ecl. 526, 
1925, 793% 

what for that, what of that! Hawes 757. 

what for then, what of that? Orl. xv:22. 

whele, weal, Cavend. 1141, cp. 1144. 

wher, whether, Walton E 27, FaPrin. A 94, 
G 327, Orl. xxiii:4. 

Where? see Ubi Sunt. 

wherwt, wherewith. 

whether, whither, Cavend. 1189, 1216. 

whiles, s. wiles, Cavend. 165*. 

whill, while, Orl. x:2. 

white by black, see notes on FaPrin. G 33, Hawes 
1349. See Garl. 1210. 

whittle, knife, Ecl. 575. 

whomanly, womanly, Cavend. 1358, see 165*. 

whofull, woeful, Cavend. 58. 

whois, whose, Churl 32. 

whose, whoso, Nevill 201. 

whow, how, Pallad. A 3. 

whyght, white, Prohib. 40, 98.  egges 
whyghtes, whites of eggs, Prohib. 53. 

whyl, while, Orl. vi:10. 

whylfulnes, wilfulness, Orl. vii:1. 

whylk, which, Mass 77. 

whyste, whist, quiet, Garl. 267. 

ee which, Dance 2, etc., Mass 154, Libel 
457 

wide open, flat on his back, Ecl. 16. 

Wife, the patient, see Bycorne;—Wife of Bath, 
Dial. 694. 

wight, weight? word-mass? Pallad. 124; —white, 
Cavend. 1408. 

wi3t, wiht, MaReg. 175, Dance 208, 583, 625, 
FaPrin. E 12. 


wilfully, of free will, Walton E 38. 

willi, willing, FaPrin. A 462. 

Windows, Hawes 347*. 

winke, Dance 643*. 

wirche, to work, Dial. 647. 

wise, to guide, Pallad. 42; —to instruct, idid., 
107. 

thus wise, in such manner, Ecl. 349. 

wist, knew, Burgh 4, Lickp. 21, Orl. xviii:10. 

wit, to know, Shirley 1:62. 

arr: to blame, Dial. 667;—to know, MaReg. 

85. 

with, see note Thebes 35. 

withall, therewith, Hawes 4356. 

withhalt, withholds, Dance 215. 

withholde, kept, Garl. 1268. 

wie bands of twisted twigs, ropes, Ship 

13. 

wode, furious, cruel, Libel 226, Garl. 1301. See 
wood. 

wofull? Hawes 670. 

wol, woll, v. will, Cavend. 1304. 

wolde, would. 

wolffes hede, wolf’s head, Bycorne 117*. 

wolgare, vulgar (tongue?, Shirley 1:30. See 
vulgar. 

woll, will, Cavend. 1304. 

wolle, wool, Libel 56, 79, 90, Ecl. 147. 

Wolsey, >Ship 8509*, Cavend. 85 ff. 

wombe, belly, Ship 48, Ecl. 146, 220, 221. 

wane to turn from, shrink, Dial. 523, Libel 
435, 

wonder, woundir, wonderfully, very, Walton 
A 26, 76, 154, 165, 173, 305, B 1, E 66, Garl. 
69;—a. wonderful, Walton A 279, FaPrin. 
G 238. 

wonderly, wonderfully, Walton D 8, Hawes 
701, Garl. 38, 269. 

wondersly, wonderfully, very, Hawes 4307. 

wone, wonne, to dwell, Hawes 298; —s. cus- 
tom, MaReg. 294, Libel 420. 

woned, wont, Walton D 37. 

wont, ‘accustomed, Lickp. 78. 

wood, furious, Walton B 22, Pallad. 13. See 
wode. 

wook, woke, Orl. xix:6. 

woon, number, Lickp. 51. 

woot, to know, MaReg. 42. 

wordli, worldly, Churl 378, FaPrin. C 74, Cav- 
end. 219, 1113. Frequent in MSS. 

worne, outworn? Morley 6. 

worship, s. worth, honor, Dance 63, FaPrin. 
A273; \G 2295 Mass 98, Garl. 1152; —to gain 
honor for, FaPrin. G 229, 298. 

wot, woot, to know. 

wost, wotst, thou knowest, Orl. xxi:12, ix:19. 

wouch saue, vouchsafe, Shirley II:71. 

woundir, see wonder. 

wouynge, s. weaving, Garl. 776. 

wowed, wooed, tempted, MaReg. 188. 

woxe, waxed, grew, Libel 202. 

wrake, vengeance, Mass 36;—wreck, Garl. 507. 

wrate, wrote, Garl. 96, 347, 367, 1215, 1222, 
1351, 1487. 


AND FINDING LIST 591 


wreche, vengeance, FaPrin. B 57. 

wreke, avenged, Walton A 115, Dance 587. 

wrenchis, shrewd turns, MaReg. 378, Garl- 
1185. 


wrete, written, Dial. 671. 

wretyn, written, Prohib. 4. 

wretyng, writing, Prohib. 82. 

wright, write, Garl. 85. 

wrotte, wrote, FaPrin. H 33. 

wrough, rough, Hawes 4307. 

wt, with. 

wtin, within. 

wtout, without. 

wtstonde, withstand. 

wul, »v. will, Pallad. 58. 

wych, which, Prohib. 23, 42, 79. 

wyle, s. while, time, Dial. 578. 

wyly, wily, Orl. viiz4 

wyne, to win, Garl. 152: 

wynshed, kicked up, Garl. 1179. 

wyre, i.e., were, doubt, Orl. xiii:3. 

wysse, 4. wise, Prohib. 91;—s. wise, manner, 
Prohib. 16. 

wyten, known, Hardyng 109. 

ae to know, Reproof 5, 62;—to blame, Rip- 
ey 81. 

wyttely, wisely, Prohib. 98. 


xiiine, thirteen, FaPrin. E 18. 
xxti, twenty, MaReg. 111. 


y, I, Walton passim, MaReg. passim, Orleans 
passim, etc. 

y fere, see yfere. 

y now, see ynow. 

yaf, gave, Walton B 11, Dance 484, FaPrin.H 31. 

yalowe, yellow, Garl. 289. 

yatis, gates, Walton D 38, Garl. 574, 575, 579. 

yave, gave, Garl. 58, 131, 1095. 

yborn, born, Dance 577. 

yche, each, Prohib. 11. 

ychesyled, chiselled, Hawes 319. 

ychon, each one, Shirley I1:40. 

yclipped, called by name, Hawes 421, 4370. 
See iclipped. 

yconomye, economy, Pallad. 78*. 

ydoon, done, Orl. xv:15. 

ye, the, Shirley II, in Stow’s hand, passim. 

ye, yea, Epithal. 134, Lickp. 93;—eye, MaReg. 
97, 98, Garl. 245. 

yearth, earth, Shirley II:95. 

yede, went, Lickp. 110. 

yef, if, Libel 135, 141, 145, 269, 334, 410, 460, 
5325 534. See yiff. 

but yef, unless, Libel 254. 


yelde, to return, i.e., as reward, Dial. 558; —to 
render, Dance 270. See yolde. 

yelde me, submit myself, Ship 13808. 

yeman, yeoman, Ship 475. 

yen, eyes, Bedford 8, Garl. 245. 

yerne, to pursue eagerly, Garl. 1376. 

yerne, quickly, Epithal. 188. 

yerthe, earth, Cavend. 103. 

yeuyth, give (imper.plu.), Horns 48, 52. 

yeve, etc., to give, Churl 14, 158, 197, 304, 322, 
Horns 13, LettGlouc. 42, FaPrin. B 112, C 5, 
73, E 53, G 43, 202, Burgh 24, Libel 404. 

yewres, 1.€., eweress, she who fetches water for 
the guests’ handwashing, Hawes 422. 

yfere, in fere, in company, Dance 95, Mass 84. 

yiff, if, Thebes 39, 112, 134, FaPrin. A 187, 
B 19; 93, Libel 519. See yef. 

we gifts, Dance 622, Pallad. 37, 83, Libel 

478. 


yit, yet, Orl. ix:17, Libel 346, 354. 

yit for thy, nevertheless, Dance 91. 

yive, give, FaPrin. A 279, Mass 69, 118, 122. 

yles, isles, Ship 6974, 6977. 

yliche, alike, Dance ‘47, 

ylle, evil, bad, Mass 106, Ship 19, 70, 459, 13828; 
—s. harm, Ship 593, 8492. See ill. 

ymagen, imagine, invent, Hawes 4289. 

ymaginatife, imaginative, Hawes 660, 4284. 

ymaginid, imagined, contrived, FaPrin. G 93. 

ymeeued, moved, MaReg. 391. 

ymeneus, Hymen, Epithal. 176*. 

ymeynt, mingled, Thebes 15. 

ympnes, hymns, Shirley I1:28. 

ynamyd, named, Reproof 20. 

ynde, of India, Churl 254, 308. 

ynne, in, Walton D 43. 

ynnynge, harvest, To Somer 15 

ynough, ynow, enough, Dial. 602, Orl. v:3, 
xili:10, etc. 

yode, went, Lickp. 97, Libel 197. 

yoie, joy, FaPrin. A 371. 

yolde, yielded, submitted, FaPrin. E 65; — 

paid, Dance 159. 

went: youthful, Walton A 310. 

yore, before, MaReg. 29. 

yore agone, long ago, Epithal. 31, FaPrin. 

215. 


yove, given, MaReg. 99, Horns 34, Thebes 46, 
Dance 38, FaPrin. G 144, Mass 68. 

yowde, went, Lickp. 2 
yperborye, the Hyperborean, Burgh 48. 

ypocrysye, hypocrisy, Mass 150. 

yresshe game, Ship 209*. 

yseide, said, Dance 459. 

ysoude, Isolde, Mass 184. 

yt, it; —that, in Shirley’s abbreviation, II. See 
under ye. "See Cavend. 104. 


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